What??? The Smithsonian Magazine has a fascinating article about a team of diggers in Australia finding dinosaurs that would have had fared the cold winters back when Australia and Antarctica were joined near the South Pole.

Think “dinosaurs” and you probably conjure up behemoths trudging through sweltering swamps or torrid tropical forests. But Rich and other scientists working in Australia, Alaska and even atop a mountain in Antarctica have unearthed remains of dinosaurs that prospered in environments that were cold for at least part of the year. Polar dinosaurs, as they are known, also had to endure prolonged darkness—up to six months each winter. “The moon would be out more than the sun, and it would be tough making a living,” says paleontologist David Weishampel of Johns Hopkins University

I remember growing up and thinking all dinosaurs lived within the warm areas as they were perceived to be cold-blooded, but more and more the evidence is up in the air on what they were. It’s a fascinating article and I highly suggest taking a look at what it goes into, but I will leave you with this:

There might be a happy medium, after all. Metabolically speaking, the animals might have fallen between today’s lizards and mammals, says Fastovsky. If dinos weren’t like today’s ectotherms or endotherms, he says, that would explain why researchers have had such a hard time fitting them into either category.