Weird Dinosaurs: The Strange New Fossils Challenging Everything We Thought We Knew

From the outback of Australia to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and the savanna of Madagascar, the award-winning science writer and dinosaur enthusiast John Pickrell embarks on a world tour of new finds, meeting the fossil hunters who work at the frontier of discovery. He reveals the dwarf dinosaurs unearthed by an eccentric Transylvanian baron; an aquatic, crocodile-snouted carnivore bigger than T. rex that once lurked in North African waterways; a Chinese dinosaur with wings like a bat; and a Patagonian sauropod so enormous it weighed more than two commercial jet airliners.

Other surprising discoveries hail from Alaska, Siberia, Canada, Burma, and South Africa. Why did dinosaurs grow so huge? How did they spread across the world? Did they all have feathers? What do sauropods have in common with 1950s vacuum cleaners? The stuff of adventure movies and scientific revolutions, Weird Dinosaurs examines the latest breakthroughs and new technologies that are radically transforming our understanding of the distant past. Pickrell opens a vivid portal to a brand-new age of fossil discovery, in which fossil hunters are routinely redefining what we know and how we think about prehistory's most iconic and fascinating creatures.

ISBN-13: 9780231180986

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Publication Date: 03-28-2017

Pages: 280

Product Dimensions: 6.30(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.10(d)

Age Range: 18 Years

John Pickrell is an award-winning journalist, the editor of Australian Geographic magazine, and the author of Flying Dinosaurs: How Fearsome Reptiles Became Birds (Columbia, 2014). He has worked in London, Washington, D.C., and Sydney for publications including New Scientist, Science, Science News, and Cosmos. His articles can also be found online and in print at BBC Wildlife, National Geographic, Scientific American, Focus, and the ABC. He studied biology at Imperial College in the United Kingdom and at the Natural History Museum, London.

Table of Contents

World Map
Foreword, by Philip Currie
Introduction: A New Golden Age for Dinosaur Science
1. Monster from the Cretaceous Lagoon: The Sahara, Egypt
2. All Hail the Dino-Bat: Hebei Province, China
3. Dwarf Dinosaurs and Trailblazing Aristocrats: Transylvania, Romania
4. Horny Ornaments and Sexy Ceratopsians: Alberta, Canada
5. The 'Unusual Terrible Hands': Gobi Desert, Mongolia
6. Scandalous Behaviour and Enfluffled Vegetarians: Siberia, Russia
7. Cretaceous Creatures of the Frozen North: Alaska, United States
8. The Hidden Treasures Down Under: Lightning Ridge, Australia
9. Record-breaking titans: Patagonia, Argentina
10. Southern Killers Set Adrift: Mahajanga Basin, Madagascar
11. Polar Pioneers and the Frozen Crested Lizard: Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica
Future Potential
Glossary
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Notes
Credits
Index Show More