Weird dinosaurs : the strange new fossils challenging everything we thought we knew / John Pickrell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pickrell, John, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dinosaurs.

Animals, Fossil.

Paleontology.

Paleontological excavations.

Physical Description:

xv, 242 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color), maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2016]

Summary:

"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."--Jacket.

Contents:

Foreword / by Philip Currie

Introduction : a new golden age for dinosaur science

Monster from the Cretaceous lagoon : the Sahara, Egypt

All hail the dino-bat : Hebei Province, China

Dwarf dinosaurs and trailblazing aristocrats : Transylvania, Romania

Horny ornaments and sexy ceratopsians : Alberta, Canada

The 'unusual terrible hands' : Gobi Desert, Mongolia

Scandalous behaviour and enfluffled vegetarians : Siberia, Russia

Cretaceous creatures of the frozen north : Alaska, United States

The hidden treasures Down Under : Lightning Ridge, Australia

Record-breaking titans : Patagonia, Argentina

Southern killers set adrift : Mahajanga Basin, Madagascar

Polar pioneers and the frozen crested lizard : Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica

Future potential.

Notes:

"First published in Australia by NewSouth, an imprint of UNSW Press Ltd."--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-230) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Pickrell, John. Weird dinosaurs.

ISBN:

9780231180986

0231180985

OCLC:

964378566