Polar Bear Lizard (Autodesk Sketchbook Painting)

During the Late Cretaceous a relatively small tyrannosaur roamed the Alaskan Arctic. It has been named Nanuqsaurus hoglundi, which translates to “Hoglund’s polar bear lizard.” The name derives from the Iñupiaq people’s word for polar bear, Nanuq and the species honoring philanthropist Forrest Hoglund. This tyrannosaur was a close cousin to the larger and famous Tyrannosaurus rex which is known from the latest Cretaceous of western North America, but was half its size, being estimated at 16 to 20 feet in length. It is hypothesized that Nanuqsaurus would also have had feathers to help regulate its body temperatures in the cooler climates of the Late Cretaceous Arctic.
The depiction of Gorgosaurus was incorrectly named Nanuqsaurus in Walking with Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Planet 3D, when the movie states it is a Gorgosaurus. It was renamed, though, to be more accurate, since the Gorgosaurus species found in Alaska where the movie took place was no longer valid and the formation now has Nanuqsaurus as the theropod, which is much smaller than even Gorgosaurus.

•Date: April 27th, 2023 5:22 P.M.
•Size: 362.81 kb
•Resolution: 1103 x 1470