Transylvanian Dinosaurs

David B. Weishampel · Coralia-Maria Jianu

Αυγ 2011 · JHU Press

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At the end of the time of the dinosaurs, Transylvania was an island in what was to become southeastern Europe. The island's limited resources affected the size and life histories of its animals, resulting in a local dwarfism. For example, sauropods found on the island measured only six meters long, while their cousins elsewhere grew up to five times larger. Here, David B. Weishampel and Coralia-Maria Jianu present unique evolutionary interpretations of this phenomenon.

The authors bring together the latest information on the fauna, flora, geology, and paleogeography of the region, casting these ancient reptiles in their phylogenetic, paleoecological, and evolutionary contexts. What the authors find is that Transylvanian dinosaurs experienced a range of unpredictable successes as they evolved.

Woven throughout the detailed history and science of these diminutive dinosaurs is the fascinating story of the man who first discovered them, the mysterious twentieth-century paleontologist Franz Baron Nopcsa, whose name is synonymous with Transylvanian dinosaurs. Hailed by some as the father of paleobiology, it was Nopcsa alone who understood the importance of the dinosaur discoveries in Transylvania; their story cannot be told without recounting his.

Transylvanian Dinosaurs strikes an engaging balance between biography and scientific treatise and is sure to capture the imagination of professional paleontologists and amateur dinophiles alike.

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David B. Weishampel is a professor of functional anatomy and evolution at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is senior editor of The Dinosauria and coauthor of Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History and The Dinosaurs of the East Coast, the last also published by Johns Hopkins. Coralia-Maria Jianu is an independent consultant and former curator of the vertebrate paleontology and mineralogy collection at the Museum of Dacian and Roman Civilization in Romania.