XPost: ne.weather, alt.global-warming, sac.politics   
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   From: lying.sacks.of.shit@generationim.com   
      
   The North Pole wasn’t always a winter wonderland. Rewind 90   
   million years, and scientists think it was probably as warm as   
   parts of Florida.   
      
   A new clue supporting that idea is a fossilized wing bone   
   belonging to a newly discovered prehistoric bird found in the   
   Canadian Arctic. The duck-size creature looked like a cross   
   between a sea gull and a cormorant, but with a beak full of   
   teeth. It could both fly and dive, and it most likely lived   
   alongside turtles, crocodilelike reptiles and a whole lot of   
   fish.   
      
   “This was a hyperwarm period, a real spike in temperatures where   
   we think even during the winter there wasn’t freezing water,”   
   said John Tarduno, a geophysicist from the University of   
   Rochester. “Tingmiatornis arctica adds to this picture that we   
   have of this incredibly warm Arctic 90 million years ago.”   
      
   Dr. Tarduno and his team published their findings on Monday in   
   the journal Scientific Reports.   
      
   Scientists aren’t sure why Earth was stifling hot for several   
   million years during the Cretaceous period, but according to Dr.   
   Tarduno, the prevailing hypothesis is that the atmosphere was   
   filled with heat-trapping carbon dioxide, most likely the result   
   of extraordinary volcanic activity. The resulting greenhouse   
   effect would have transformed the polar ecosystem into a place   
   where Tingmiatornis arctica and its prey could thrive.   
      
   The warming period, known as the Turonian age, is estimated to   
   have lasted from 93.9 million to 89.8 million years ago. At its   
   coldest, it is estimated that the Arctic got around 57 degrees   
   Fahrenheit.   
      
   In his time exploring the snowcapped brown hills and thick   
   glaciers of Nunavut, in the Canadian Arctic, Dr. Tarduno has   
   come across two wing bones belonging to this species of bird. He   
   uncovered the first humerus in 1999. It was relatively small and   
   he didn’t pay it much mind until he found a second, larger bone   
   a few years later. But even the second humerus didn’t catch his   
   attention at first. Instead, he and his team were preoccupied   
   with a large turtle shell that was on the other side of the same   
   rock.   
      
   “We took it back to camp and went, ‘Oh, wait a minute, there’s   
   another spectacular fossil on the other side,’ ” Dr. Tarduno   
   said.   
      
   After finding the bones, they turned to their colleague Julia   
   Clarke, a paleontologist from the University of Texas at Austin,   
   for further analysis. She knew the bones belonged to a group of   
   birds called ornithurines, which includes all living birds and   
   their closest extinct relatives. But by studying the unique   
   marks on the points on the bone where it was once attached to   
   muscle, she was able to determine that the fossil belonged to a   
   prehistoric bird unlike any that had previously been discovered.   
      
   Dr. Clarke was also able to determine that the bird was a   
   capable flier because of the size and shape of the bone, and   
   that the bird most likely dove in the water because of the   
   thickness of the outermost layer, known as the cortical bone.   
      
   She said the finding might help paleontologists understand an   
   even bigger mystery.   
      
   “We can’t explain why some flying dinosaurs, which we call   
   birds, went extinct right alongside all the other dinosaurs,”   
   she said, “and why only parts of the ornithurines survived to   
   the present day.”   
      
   By collecting more fossils of ornithurine birds like   
   Tingmiatornis arctica, paleontologists can better understand   
   what helped this lineage of birds survive the extinction event   
   66 million years ago when three-quarters of all animal and plant   
   life perished.   
      
   http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/science/prehistoric-bird-   
   arctic.html?_r=0   
      
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