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

by John Pickrell

Overview

“A tour de force…highlights the odd reptiles that roamed all corners of the earth millions of years ago.”—Sydney Morning Herald
 
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. 
 
“This history of the discovery of some of the most outlandish creatures that ever lived, and the excitement of paleontological research, will be sure to both entertain and instruct.”—Spencer Lucas, author of Dinosaurs: The Textbook, Sixth Edition

“Fascinating.... Readers learn of beautiful opalised dinosaur bones from Australia and a crested dinosaur found approximately 13,000 feet up Antarctica's Mt. Kirkpatrick, demonstrating that dinosaurs were widely distributed across the globe.”—Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231543392
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	07/15/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
Sales rank:	399,476
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

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

Editorial Reviews

01/30/2017
Pickrell (Flying Dinosaurs), editor of Australian Geographic, dishes more dirt on dinosaurs, focusing as much attention on the humans who scour the Earth in search of dinosaur fossils as he does on the fossils themselves. Some of his stories are fascinating, such as his account of how Transylvanian aristocrat Franz Baron Nopcsa von Felso-Szilvás moved between hunting for dinosaur bones in Romania and serving as a spy in Ottoman Albania while plotting to be named king of Albania, but others are somewhat pedestrian. Each of Pickrell’s 11 chapters focuses on a geographical region and catalogues the specimens found there, with a majority of the attention paid to the latest discoveries. Readers learn of beautiful opalised dinosaur bones from Australia and a crested dinosaur found approximately 13,000 feet up Antarctica’s Mt. Kirkpatrick, demonstrating that dinosaurs were widely distributed across the globe. Unlike his previous book, this one doesn’t offer much insight into the evolution of behavior or anatomy, though he does touch on the evolution of feathers and extremely long necks in sauropods. Despite the title, the dinosaurs Pickrell discusses don’t seem that weird, but given that the “rate of discovery has been increasing nearly exponentially,” something more strange is bound to appear soon. Illus. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Australian Geographic editor John Pickrell brings us up to date with Weird Dinosaurs, using the species' often bizarre features as a giddy hook. Some had bat-like wings, some had elaborate neck frills, others shock with how large (or small) they were. Pickrell spends a lot of time on quests of individual fossil hunters and he shifts the focus from traditional fossil destinations such as North America to current hotspots China, Mongolia and Antarctica.

The Big Issue, Australia - Doug Wallen

In the 26 years since Jurassic Park was released we have unearthed about 75 per cent of all known dinosaur species.... Weird Dinosaurs is a tour de force through the latest digs across the planet. It features the amazing people unearthing new fossils and highlights the odd reptiles that roamed all corners of the earth millions of years ago.

Sydney Morning Herald - Marcus Strom

Weird Dinosaurs is an informative and entertaining text with a nice blend of narrative and scientific fact... the facts and information included are simply fascinating.

Sharon the Librarian

This history of the discovery of some of the most outlandish creatures that ever lived, and the excitement of paleontological research, will be sure to both entertain and instruct. No other such historical narrative exists that is focused on weird extinct beasts.

Spencer Lucas