<\/a>Photo Illustration \/ Lauren Keller \n A fragment of a bird tooth as well as a bird bone researchers found in the bluffs above the Colville River with a dime for comparison. The fossils are 73 million years old.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
Keller is now on the job of finding out more about these prehistoric birds as she earns a master’s degree. She traveled last spring (a time up there most people would call winter, with subzero temperatures and snow as far as she could see) to the Colville River to dig for clues about what the area was like in the time of the dinosaurs.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Back then, the land was even farther from the equator than it is today. Keller<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
described the environment there 70 million years ago during a recent presentation on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“The animals there were dealing with 120 days of winter darkness, and snow,” she said. No evidence of prehistoric amphibians, crocodiles, turtles or lizards at the sites, she noted.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Despite being so far north, the climate there was warmer than where Keller lives today in Fairbanks. The prehistoric North Slope supported a coniferous forest and many ferns. It was perhaps similar to what people in Juneau experience today, though much darker in winter.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Scientists have found at least 14 species of dinosaurs lived there, as well as six types of mammals, some fish and at least two kinds of birds.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The prehistoric birds Keller is piecing together were not like today’s birds, she said. For one thing, birds today have no teeth.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Birds are dinosaurs,” she said. “There are real links between them.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
One such connection is the wishbone you find in your Thanksgiving turkey that T. rex also sported in its chest. Birds and the largest dinosaurs also had bones filled with air (which, being lighter than solid bones, helps birds fly).<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t