Scientists from Fairbanks, New Mexico and Japan have discovered the first reported fossilized tracks of a large four-toed bird that inhabited central Alaska 90 million to 120 million years ago.

A description of the two tracks was published in August in a special edition of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin and presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Minneapolis.

The bird tracks were found in 2023 in mid-Cretaceous rock near the communities of Nulato and Kaltag. The location significantly extends northward the known geographic range of this type of track.

The work was led by paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

The August paper’s co-authors include University of Alaska Fairbanks geology professor Paul McCarthy with the UAF College of Natural Science and Mathematics and UAF Geophysical Institute, and associate professor of paleontology Yoshitsugu Kobayashi of Hokkaido University.

“Rather than a geographic oddity, we submit that the tracks described here offer further insight into the importance of the ancient Arctic in terms of bird biodiversity,” the authors write.

The newly discovered fossil tracks, found among several fossil tracks of smaller birds, are of a large four-toed bird and show three toes pointing forward and one pointing toward the rear. The toes are unwebbed.

“We found a fair number of fossil bird footprints,” Fiorillo said. “We found smaller bird footprints that would belong to something comparable to a modern-day shorebird such as a willet or an avocet.

“Then we found the footprints that are much larger,” he said. “They were more crane size or slightly bigger, more like whooping crane size.”

Fiorillo places the tracks in the Archaeornithipus ichnogenus, a classification of the most primitive birds. Archaeornithipus was first coined in 1996 to describe fossil tracks found in Soria, Spain.

An ichnogenus is a classification used to group trace fossils such as footprints, burrows or feeding marks that share similar characteristics. Trace fossils represent the behavior of organisms but do not necessarily indicate the species that made them.

Fossil tracks of other comparably sized birds of that era have been found in Denali National Park and in the Chignik Formation in Aniakchak National Monument in Southwest Alaska. Those tracks, however, are all of large three-toed birds whose toes pointed forward.

“That might seem trivial — three toes versus four toes,” Fiorillo said. “But what that reverse toe does with modern birds is it allows them to perch instead of being on the ground all the time when they are not flying. 

“So we’re now looking at two very large types of birds doing two very different things,” he said.

The finding of the Alaska tracks adds to understanding of the complexity of the biodiversity at the time, Fiorillo said.

The three researchers in August 2023 investigated mid-Cretaceous sedimentary rock outcroppings along the Yukon River in west-central Alaska to better understand the dinosaurs that were present and their environments close to the time of the formation of the Bering land bridge. The work is part of a larger undertaking to understand that era.

The researchers found the Archaeornithipus tracks in what had been a floodplain adjacent to a river during the mid-Cretaceous, McCarthy said. 

The finds occurred next to an exposed channel under a bluff along the Yukon. The area contained numerous trace fossils of smaller birds and other dinosaurs, all previously known to have inhabited the region.

“It was where you would have had a lot of fine-grained material that was probably firm mud that would have taken a bird footprint in it without turning into soup,” McCarthy said. 

That material was then buried and hardened over time. Those rocks, over millions of years, were eventually thrust to the surface.

McCarthy said there’s much more to explore. There hasn’t been major geologic fieldwork in the area for more than 40 years, he said.

“It’s still a frontier basin,” he said. “It’s been mapped, and we have a general idea of what’s out there, especially right along the river, but there’s a whole lot of detail about ancient sedimentation and environments that nobody knows because nobody’s been looking.”

The Port of Seward, which serves a coastal Kenai Peninsula town that is a tourism hotspot in the summer, has received a $45.7 million grant to develop a system to cut air pollution from visiting cruise ships.

The grant, from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Ports Program, is for shore-based power and battery storage systems to be used by the cruise ships that sail in and out of Seward. Those systems will allow cruise ships to switch to electric power from the emissions-spewing diesel fuel they burn while making port calls.

The systems are planned as part of a redeveloped cruise facility expected to be operating in 2026. The new facility is designed to have a floating pier to replace the current fixed dock, accommodating more and bigger ships.

The port project is led by The Seward Company, a public-private developer with the Alaska Railroad, Royal Caribbean Group and Turnagain Marine as partners.

The EPA Clean Ports grant will help Seward meet its environmental goals, the city’s mayor said in a statement.

“The Port of Seward’s shore power project will place Seward among the forefront of sustainable ports in North America. By reducing reliance on diesel generators, we are not only cutting emissions but also enhancing the resilience of our local electric grid,” Mayor Sue McClure said in the statement.

Seward is the smallest community among those with ports that received the 55 EPA Clean Ports Program grants announced last week.

Most of the grant-receiving ports are in major population centers. The three biggest grants went to the Port of Los Angeles, the Port of Virginia in Norfolk and the Port of New York and New Jersey. The Port of Alaska in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, was another grant recipient, getting $1.9 million for an emissions inventory and clean-energy transition study.

Seward, in contrast, has only about 2,500 full-time residents within city limits and a roughly similar number in areas just outside of the city boundaries, said Kat Sorensen, the city manager.  

But in summer, Seward’s numbers swell. Seasonal workers bring the population to about 7,500 to 10,000, Sorensen said, and tourists add several thousands more each day, she said.

Cruise travel has grown in Seward, just as it has grown in the state in general, Sorensen said.

Alaska’s cruise business has hit all-time highs, bouncing back from the halt caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, a record 1.65 million cruise passengers visited the state, and this year’s totals could wind up being even higher, according to industry reports.

While most cruise passengers’ travel in Alaska is in Southeast Alaska, Seward — in the state’s Southcentral region — got about 190,000 cruise passengers last year, according to industry experts. Between April and October of this year, there were 104 scheduled cruise ship stops in Seward, according to the Cruise Lines International Association.

Sorensen said the cruise companies need to keep their ships powered when making port calls in Seward.  

“A fishing boat can come in for a week and just shut off. But the cruise ships can’t,” she said.

Along with building onshore power and battery storage systems, the plan includes a workforce-development program focused on the Seward-based Alaska Vocational Technical Center, she said.

“I think it’s just a win-win-win,” she said.

Alaska’s capital city, Juneau, was the first to develop a shore-based power system for cruise ships. While Seward is on track to be the second Alaska cruise destination to develop such a system, shore-based power is now available for cruise ships in several major ports along the U.S. West Coast and around the world.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Multiple rooms were full Saturday with wares from the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium Indigenous Arts and Crafts Fair. From ivory carvings to fish skin art, there was a chance to delve into the deep culture of Alaska Native peoples.

The fair is slated as an annual happening on the first Saturday in November, says Roberta Miljure, Volunteer Coordinator at the Alaska Native Medical Center. The arts and crafts fair is intended to encourage Alaska Native artists to continue practicing their traditional artistry and crafts and provide a market to sell them.

“Alaska Natives made their own garments, their own clothing, out of the things that they harvested from the land and from the sea and the air. And that’s how this started. It was actually the clothing and things, the things that they made out of their traditional materials, became art. And so that’s why we want to support the artists and make sure they have a market to continue the traditional activities,” said Miljure.

Audrey Armstrong, a fish skin artist who makes baskets and jewelry, says when she creates art she’s preserving her culture.

“Art to me, explains my identity,” says Armstrong. “Art is living our traditional way, learning our traditional way. And I think when we make a piece of art, it gives us such sense of pride in our culture and that we’re able to continue it. And my biggest thing is for art, for the artists to continue it, but also to be a teacher, to teach the younger generation, so this will continue for more generations to come. So it just doesn’t disappear.”

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