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

John Pickrell, an award-winning science writer and dinosaur enthusiast, documents a global tour of recent fossil discoveries. He travels from Australia's outback to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, Madagascar's savanna, and other locations worldwide, meeting the fossil hunters conducting this research. Pickrell describes newly discovered dinosaur species, including dwarf dinosaurs found by a Transylvanian baron; a large aquatic carnivore with a crocodile-like snout from North African waterways; a Chinese dinosaur with bat-like wings; and a Patagonian sauropod weighing more than two commercial jet airliners. Additional discoveries come from Alaska, Siberia, Canada, Burma, and South Africa. The book explores questions about dinosaur size, global distribution, feather coverage, and sauropod characteristics. It examines recent breakthroughs and new technologies that are changing understanding of prehistoric life, including opalised dinosaur bones from Australia and a crested dinosaur found at high elevation on Antarctica's Mt. Kirkpatrick.