Dwarf Tyrannosaur from the North Pole - for real!

Two days ago, the best dinosaur discovery I could think of was a predatory noasaurid adapted for burrowing. Since the last 3 hours, it is this guy: www.plosone.org/article/info%3…

Meet Nanuqsaurus hoglundi, the new contender for "best newly discovered dinosaur of the year" and also another case of "dinosaur you might have only thought of in Speculative Evolution". This theropod was discovered in the Prince Creek Formation in Alaska, and ever since Yutyrannus left its fluffy mark on us we should probably never consider this tyrannosaurid that lived at the freaking North Pole to not have sported a thick coat of feathers. The most popular inhabitants of the Prince Creek Formation are the oversized Troodonts, which are believed to have grown bigger to find more food in the polar nights, and interestingly, Nanuqsaurus seemed to have taken the opposite evolutionary direction to reach the same goal. Despite being from an adult animal, the Nanuqsaurus remains point to an animal only 5 meters long, making it the smallest tyrannosaurine we know of. The small size helped it to survive the polar nights when food became rare.

Here a Nanuqsaurus scares a big Alaskan Troodon from a dead/dying Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum (emphasizing the species name here because this is the only Pachyrhinosaurus species known from the Prince Creek Formation, stop using P. lakustai for an Alaskan setting, guys!). Unless I missed something, the Pachyrhinosaurs and Edmontosaurs of Alaska were no dwarf forms, so I doubt Nanuqsaurus would ever attack a fully grown herbivore like its bigger cousins in the South apparently did. I guess Nanuqsaurus and the Troodons mostly preyed on juvenile ceratopsians/hadrosaurs and let the harsh winters do the killing of adult animals.

Since its name is derived from the Inuit word for polar bear, I could have just coloured it like a polar bear, but I didn´t want a plain white dinosaur in my drawing, so all these dinosaurs´ patterns are partially based on birds. The Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum is based on a Willow ptarmigan and I have drawn it before, but after seeing Mark Witton´s blog post markwitton-com.blogspot.de/201… I decided to cover it entirely in fuzz this time. The Troodon is based on a Long-eared Owl and our little King of the North Pole itself has a tiny bit of crested penguin in it.

It has been three years since March of the Dinosaurs and four months since Walking with Dinosaurs 3D and I already want a new documentary about Arctic dinosaurs, one that incorporates this fantastic new theropod