About this item
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.
About the Author
John Pickrell is an award-winning journalist, the editor of Australian Geographic magazine and the author of Flying Dinosaurs and Weird Dinosaurs. He has worked in London, Washington DC and Sydney for publications including New Scientist, Science, Science News and Cosmos. John's articles can also be found online and in print at BBC Wildlife, National Geographic, Scientific American, Focus and the ABC. When he's not writing or editing, he can be found on fossil digs in the Australian outback or Mongolia's Gobi Desert. He has been a finalist in the Australian Museum's Eureka prizes three times, won an Earth Journalism Award and featured in The Best Australian Science Writing in 2011, 2014 and 2015. John studied biology at Imperial College in the United Kingdom, and has a Master of Science in taxonomy and biodiversity from the Natural History Museum, London. Follow him on Twitter @john_pickrell and at www.flyingdinosaurs.net.
