It’s strange to picture dinosaurs in Antarctica, because today Antarctica is a frozen desert. But during much of the dinosaur era, Antarctica was a temperate forested land - warm, wet, and full of life. And yes, dinosaurs lived there too.
Paleontologists have now found dinosaur fossils on all seven continents. Polar dinosaurs included plant-eaters that grazed Antarctic forests during the brief summer, and small predators with surprisingly large eyes - likely adapted to the long, dark polar winters when the sun barely rose.
The continents were also closer together back then. For much of the dinosaur era, Earth had a single giant supercontinent called Pangaea, and dinosaurs could walk freely between what would later split into separate continents. By the time Pangaea broke apart, dinosaurs had already spread to every corner of it.
