Weird Dinosaurs : : The Strange New Fossils Challenging Everything We Thought We Knew / / John Pickrell.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Pickrell, John,
• MitwirkendeR: Currie, Philip,
• TeilnehmendeR: Currie, Philip.
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (256 p.) :; 26 color illustrations

From the outback of Australia to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and the savanna of Madagascar, award-winning science writer and dinosaur enthusiast John Pickrell embarks on a world tour of new finds, meeting the fossil hunters working 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, which 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 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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- World Map -- Foreword -- Introduction: A New Golden Age for Dinosaur Science -- 1. Monster from the Cretaceous Lagoon -- 2. All Hail the Dino-Bat -- 3. Dwarf Dinosaurs and Trailblazing Aristocrats -- 4. Horny Ornaments and Sexy Ceratopsians -- 5. The 'Unusual Terrible Hands' -- 6. Scandalous Behaviour and Enfluffled Vegetarians -- 7. Cretaceous Creatures of the Frozen North -- 8. The Hidden Treasures Down Under -- 9. Record-Breaking Titans -- 10. Southern Killers Set Adrift -- 11. Polar Pioneers and the Frozen Crested Lizard -- Future Potential -- Glossary -- Further Reading -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Credits -- Index