Atlascopcosaurus Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓Atlascopcosaurus lived inside the Antarctic Circle during the Early Cretaceous, meaning it survived months of total polar darkness each year, which scientists think may have driven it to evolve unusually large eyes.
• ✓The fossils were blasted out of a sea cliff at Dinosaur Cove, Victoria, using explosives and mining drills provided by Atlas Copco, the Swedish company the dinosaur was eventually named after in 1989.
• ✓Australia was connected to Antarctica during the Early Cretaceous, so Atlascopcosaurus technically lived on a landmass that included what is now the frozen continent, at latitudes colder than almost any other known dinosaur habitat.
• ✓Atlascopcosaurus is known almost entirely from jaw fragments and teeth, meaning paleontologists have had to reconstruct much of its body by comparing it carefully to related iguanodont dinosaurs found on other continents.
• ✓The type species name is 'loadsi', honoring William Loads, a manager at Atlas Copco Australia who helped arrange the critical equipment donations that made the Dinosaur Cove excavations possible in the 1980s.