Dinosaur Tracks from Brazil

Dinosaur Tracks from Brazil
Author: Giuseppe Leonardi
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 590
Release: 2021-08-24
Genre: Science
ISBN: 025305723X

Dinosaur Tracks from Brazil is the first full-length study of dinosaurs in Brazil. Some 500 dinosaur trackways from the Cretaceous period still remain in the Rio do Peixe basins of Brazil, making it one of the largest trackways in the world. Veteran paleontologists Giuseppe Leonardi and Ismar de Souza Carvalho painstakingly document and analyze each track found at 37 individual sites and at approximately 96 stratigraphic levels. Richly illustrated and containing a wealth of data, Leonardi and de Souza Carvalho brilliantly reconstruct the taxonomic groups of the dinosaurs from the area and show how they moved across the alluvial fans, meandering rivers, and shallow lakes of ancient Gondwana. Dinosaur Tracks from Brazil is essential reading for paleontologists.


Dinosaur Tracks from Brazil

Dinosaur Tracks from Brazil
Author: Giuseppe Leonardi
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2021-08-24
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0253057248

Dinosaur Tracks from Brazil is the first full-length study of dinosaurs in Brazil. Some 500 dinosaur trackways from the Cretaceous period still remain in the Rio do Peixe basins of Brazil, making it one of the largest trackways in the world. Veteran paleontologists Giuseppe Leonardi and Ismar de Souza Carvalho painstakingly document and analyze each track found at 37 individual sites and at approximately 96 stratigraphic levels. Richly illustrated and containing a wealth of data, Leonardi and de Souza Carvalho brilliantly reconstruct the taxonomic groups of the dinosaurs from the area and show how they moved across the alluvial fans, meandering rivers, and shallow lakes of ancient Gondwana. Dinosaur Tracks from Brazil is essential reading for paleontologists.


Dinosaur Tracks

Dinosaur Tracks
Author: Annette Richter
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2016-08-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0253021146

This look at the field of ichnology is “an excellent compendium and a timely piece on a rapidly expanding and changing area of research” (Quarterly Review of Biology). The latest advances in dinosaur ichnology are showcased in this comprehensive and timely volume, in which leading researchers and research groups cover the most essential topics in the study of dinosaur tracks. Some assess and demonstrate state-of-the-art approaches and techniques, such as experimental ichnology, photogrammetry, biplanar X-rays, and a numerical scale for quantifying the quality of track preservation. The high diversity of these up-to-date studies underlines that dinosaur ichnological research is a vibrant field, that important discoveries are continuously made, and that new methods are being developed, applied, and refined. This indispensable volume unequivocally demonstrates that ichnology has an important contribution to make toward a better understanding of dinosaur paleobiology. Tracks and trackways are one of the best sources of evidence to understand and reconstruct the daily life of dinosaurs. They are windows on past lives, dynamic structures produced by living, breathing, moving animals now long extinct, and they are every bit as exciting and captivating as the skeletons of their makers. Includes photos and illustrations


Noah's Ravens

Noah's Ravens
Author: James O. Farlow
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 656
Release: 2018-10-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0253037166

How can the tracks of dinosaurs best be interpreted and used to reconstruct them? In many Mesozoic sedimentary rock formations, fossilized footprints of bipedal, three-toed (tridactyl) dinosaurs are preserved in huge numbers, often with few or no skeletons. Such tracks sometimes provide the only clues to the former presence of dinosaurs, but their interpretation can be challenging: How different in size and shape can footprints be and yet have been made by the same kind of dinosaur? How similar can they be and yet have been made by different kinds of dinosaurs? To what extent can tridactyl dinosaur footprints serve as proxies for the biodiversity of their makers? Profusely illustrated and meticulously researched, Noah's Ravens quantitatively explores a variety of approaches to interpreting the tracks, carefully examining within-species and across-species variability in foot and footprint shape in nonavian dinosaurs and their close living relatives. The results help decipher one of the world's most important assemblages of fossil dinosaur tracks, found in sedimentary rocks deposited in ancient rift valleys of eastern North America. Those often beautifully preserved tracks were among the first studied by paleontologists, and they were initially interpreted as having been made by big birds—one of which was jokingly identified as Noah's legendary raven.


African Dinosaurs Unearthed

African Dinosaurs Unearthed
Author: Gerhard Maier
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2003-07-02
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0253000548

From 1907 to 1931 at Tendaguru, a remote site in present-day Tanzania, teams of German (and later British) paleontologists unearthed 220 tons of fossils, including the bones of a new dinosaur, one of the largest then known. For decades the mounted skeleton of this giant, Brachiosaurus, was the largest skeleton of a land animal on exhibit in the world. The dinosaur and other animal fossils found at Tendaguru form one of the cornerstones of our understanding of life in the Mesozoic era. Visited sporadically during the '30s and '40s, Tendaguru again became the site of scientific interest late in the 20th century. African Dinosaurs Unearthed tells the story of driven scientific adventurers working under difficult conditions and often paying the price with their health—and sometimes with their lives. Set against the background of a troubled century, the book reveals how scientific endeavors were carried on through war and political turmoil, and continue into the present day.


Hadrosaurs

Hadrosaurs
Author: David A. Eberth
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2014-11-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0253013909

A comprehensive study of the Late Cretaceous, duck-billed dinosaur, featuring insights on its origins, anatomy, and more. Hadrosaurs—also known as duck-billed dinosaurs—are abundant in the fossil record. With their unique complex jaws and teeth perfectly suited to shred and chew plants, they flourished on Earth in remarkable diversity during the Late Cretaceous. So ubiquitous are their remains that we have learned more about dinosaurian paleobiology and paleoecology from hadrosaurs than we have from any other group. In recent years, hadrosaurs have been in the spotlight. Researchers around the world have been studying new specimens and new taxa seeking to expand and clarify our knowledge of these marvelous beasts. This volume presents the results of an international symposium on hadrosaurs, sponsored by the Royal Tyrrell Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum, where scientists and students gathered to share their research and their passion for duck-billed dinosaurs. A uniquely comprehensive treatment of hadrosaurs, the book encompasses not only the well-known hadrosaurids proper, but also Hadrosaouroidea, allowing the former group to be evaluated in a broader perspective. The 36 chapters are divided into six sections—an overview, new insights into hadrosaur origins, hadrosaurid anatomy and variation, biogeography and biostratigraphy, function and growth, and preservation, tracks, and traces—followed by an afterword by Jack Horner. “Well designed, handsome and fantastically well edited (credit there to Patricia Ralrick), congratulations are deserved to the editors for pulling together a vast amount of content, and doing it well. The book contains a huge quantity of information on these dinosaurs.” —Darren Naish, co-author of Tetrapod Zoology, Scientific American “Hadrosaurs have not had the wide publicity of their flesh-eating cousins, the theropods, but this remarkable dinosaur group offers unique opportunities to explore aspects of palaeobiology such as growth and sexual dimorphism. In a comprehensive collection of papers, all the hadrosaur experts of the world present their latest work, exploring topics as diverse as taxonomy and stratigraphy, locomotion and skin colour.” —Michael Benton, University of Bristol


Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of Europe

Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of Europe
Author: Martin Lockley
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2000-03-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780231504607

The long and distinguished tradition of tracking dinosaurs and other extinct animals in Europe dates back to the 1830s. Yet this venerable tradition of scientific activity cannot compare in magnitude and scope with the unprecedented spate of discovery and documentation of the last few years. Now, following on the heels of his Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of the Western United States, Martin Lockley teams up with Christian Meyer to present an up to date synthesis of the recent findings in the field of European fossil footprints. Drawing extensively on their own research results from studies in Britain, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, and elsewhere, the authors create a dynamic picture of mammal, reptile, bird, and amphibian "track-makers" throughout more than 300 million years of vertebrate evolution, placed in the context of Europe's changing ancient environments. Beginning with an introduction to tracking and a history of the European tracking tradition, Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of Europe then charts a broad path of evolutionary proliferation from the proto-dinosaurs of the Early Triassic period to the dinosaurs' decline and disappearance in the Upper Cretaceous. The survey continues into the age of mammals and birds, ending with the cave art of our Paleolithic ancestors.


Bernissart Dinosaurs and Early Cretaceous Terrestrial Ecosystems

Bernissart Dinosaurs and Early Cretaceous Terrestrial Ecosystems
Author: Pascal Godefroit
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 648
Release: 2012-07-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0253005701

In 1878, the first complete dinosaur skeleton was discovered in a coal mine in Bernissart, Belgium. Iguanodon, first described by Gideon Mantell on the basis of fragments discovered in England in 1824, was initially reconstructed as an iguana-like reptile or a heavily built, horned quadruped. However, the Bernissart skeleton changed all that. The animal was displayed in an upright posture similar to a kangaroo, and later with its tail off the ground like the dinosaur we know of today. Focusing on the Bernissant discoveries, this book presents the latest research on Iguanodon and other denizens of the Cretaceous ecosystems of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Pascal Godefroit and contributors consider the Bernissart locality itself and the new research programs that are underway there. The book also presents a systematic revision of Iguanodon; new material from Spain, Romania, China, and Kazakhstan; studies of other Early Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystems; and examinations of Cretaceous vertebrate faunas.