About dinosaurs

The reading and lecture are both about dinosaurs’ surviving during winter. The author of the reading feels that Edmontosaurus survived the winter by migrating south to more hospitable regions. These claims are challenged by the lecturer. She is of the opinion that the arguments supported by the writer are not convincing. To begin with, the author argues that Edmontosaurs fed exclusively on plants. The article mentions that since there would have been no plants growing during the cold and dark North Slope winter, it appears that the edmontosaur must have left for at least part of the year and migrated to more temperate zones to find food. This specific argument is challenged by the lecturer. She notes that these dinosaurs did not have to migrate for food because the weather was warmer than today and sun shined twenty four hours a day in the arctic regions. Additionally, she says that if there was no plant to eat, the dinosaurs would eat dead remains of the plant, and the nutrition of these plants was sufficient for edmontosaur to survive. Secondly, the writer suggests that many edmontosaur skeletons have been unearthed from the same site, and this suggests that edmontosaurs lived in herd. In the article, it is stated that many modern-day migratory animals live and migrate in herds as well. The lecturer, however, rebuts this by mentioning that herds do not mean they migrate to the south. For example, herds could protect dinosaurs from predators. She elaborates on this by bringing up the point that Roosevalt Elks also live in herds, but they do not migrate. Finally, the author posits that to reach more hospitable regions, the edmontosaur had to migrate about 1, 600 kilometers southward. To make such a journey, the edmontosaur needed to move at about five kilometers per hour for several weeks, which is certainly could do. In contrast, the professor’s position is that this ability belongs only to adults, but juveniles are not capable of running very fast. Moreover, she notes that these juvenile dinosaurs could not live alone during the harsh artic winters.