NOVA: Arctic Dinosaurs

Another amazing entry from PBS's Nova series. For many people the subject of dinosaurs conjures up visions of some steaming Mesozoic swamp with huge cold blooded lizards thundering about in a chaotic and aimless attempt to survive another day. Arctic Dinosaurs gives you another possible side to their story. For some time now paleontologist have been finding dinosaur fossils in polar regions of the earth, in southern Australia, Antarctica and now the far northern slope of Alaska. In this Nova episode the focus is on two expeditions to northern Alaska with specialist from all over the world, Canada, US, UK, Australia and South Africa, contributing to the research. A chance finding in a remote area of Alaska's North Slope led to the excavation of a work cave that gave scientist, what appeared to be, easy access to fossils encased in the permafrost. Flooding and the fragile nature of the fossils made the "dig" anything but simple. The findings led to some startling "new" theories on dinosaur metabolism. Since the early days of dinosaur research there has been an ongoing debate on whether dinosaurs were "cold-blooded" or "warm-blooded" with important points being presented by both sides. In 1978 American paleontologist Robert Bakker published an article in Scientific American titled "Dinosaur Renaissance" in which he focused on his new view of dinosaurs. Bakker went on to publish his classic book "The Dinosaur Heresies" in 1986. While Bakker was not consulted for "Arctic Dinosaurs" many of these same ideas are presented. Using state of the art CG effects Nova gives you an up close look at these polar dinosaurs and the world they lived in. Present day north-slope Alaska rests at about 70 degrees north but in Cretaceous times may have been as far north as 85 degrees, well north of the Arctic Circle. While the climate was warmer at that time the animals still would have had to deal with months of total darkness, sub-zero temperatures and food shortages. How did they cope with these conditions? Did they fast or hibernate or maybe migrate to southern climes? Nova gives you the latest findings and theories on this controversy as well a thoughts on the KT extinction event. All presented in this beautifully filmed, informative, peek at the polar "terrible lizards".LastRanger

I love dinosaur and prehistoric animal documentaries & have a lot of them. From Arctic Dinosaurs, I learned some things about plants & a couple of dinosaurs, I hadn't heard of before. It definitely held my interest.The seller said the dvd was used, acceptable. I think it's used, like new. Thanks.

I am a Climate Change fanatic, and I didn’t expect this was so much about Climate, but it really is. Sure, the dinosaur fossils found were special, but the fossilized plants found with the dinosaurs. Kind of shocking what far northern Alaska was once like, much much different way way back.

Interesting and informative

Arctic. Dinosaurs. Think about it. OK, the graphics aren't quite Jurrasic Park, but they're not bad. And its the only cold-weather dinosaurs...

I Another great topic from NOVA.

Very good!

Very good.