Adaptations to a nocturnal
environment may have defended
dinosaurs against the six months of darkness always present in Antarctica,
due to its latitude. Prior to the current ice age in Antarctica, during an earlier period of a much warmer climate,
dinosaurs may have introduced certain genetic changes there not exhibited elsewhere. Based upon dinosaur remains found in Australia, which contained large eyes, useful in a nocturnal habitat, scientists hope to gain an understanding of how dinosaurs adapted to a nocturnal
environment by studying dinosaur fossils unearthed in Antarctica.It is thought that the profuse plant life was slow to adapt to the conditions found in Antarctica, which created an environment that contained plant life forms of a previous time period (Jurassic) that existed during a later period (Cretaceous). This means that plants thought of as Jurassic species, such as cycads, palms and ginkos, a food source of specific dinosaurs, adapted to life in Antarctica during a subsequent time period, the entire Cretaceous. By creating an environment conducive to the earlier time period, the dinosaur types associated with these plant forms also continued to thrive in Antarctica, even after they had been replaced elsewhere. It is thought that these earlier dinosaurs also lived in Antarctica during the Jurassic.Since certain types of dinosaurs existed in Antarctica during both the Jurassic and the Cretaceous, unlike other areas, different sorts of genetic variations are expected to have occurred there that may have affected variations elsewhere.