David B. Weishampel

Somehow you can’t get over the idea that Transylvanian Dinosaurs wear capes, live in decaying mansions, and invite you to enter freely and of your own will. Barney with fangs. However, the authors refrain from the slightest mention of that sort of thing; instead, this is an excellent book covering a variety of topics: an account of field work in the Cretaceous Hațeg Basin; the history of vertebrate paleontology in Romania (more or less started by Franz Baron Nopsca; as a young student he complained that the University of Vienna offered no courses in paleontology, to which his adviser replied “Then learn it”, and he proceeded to do so); description of the Hațeg fauna (relatively sparse, like most European vertebrate fossils, but interesting); an introduction to cladistic taxonomy, which is really well done; paleogeography of the area (the Hațeg fossils appear to come from a moderate size island, perhaps as big as modern Sri Lanka, in the Neotethys Ocean); as discussion of heterochrony (some of the Hațeg fauna appear to be “dwarf” versions of mainland types; this is often the case in island fauna, and the authors speculate – and provide some mathematical evidence – that it’s the result of paedomorphosis); and speculation that hadrosaurs first appeared in Europe. An interesting example of what call be gleaned from a relatively small number of fossils; well written, easy to read despite a technical topic, extensively illustrated, and well referenced.… (mehr)

In parts of the West, dinosaur bones are so common that collectors throw away anything less than a substantial part of a skeleton; along the East Coast, you can spend a good chunk of your life fossil collecting and come up with a couple of teeth and an unidentifiable metatarsal. Nevertheless, East Coast dinosaur fossils have always been paleontologically important, because: (1) a whole lot of people have been looking for them; (2) they’ve been looking for them longer; and (3) they come from a geologically more interesting time and place than most of the Western fossils.


Dinosaurs of the East Coast authors David B. Weisampel and Luther Young make up for the sparsity of eastern Mesozoic material by doing a thorough job with what’s there; history of fossil collecting, Mesozoic historical geology, and whatever paleobiology can be gleaned from the fossils are all covered well.


They also do something I find quite gratifying: paying a great deal of homage to amateur collectors. This has been something of a contentious point among vertebrate paleontologists for the past few yeas. The main problem is the United States government tried to apply the same model used for the protection of archaeological sites to fossils. At first, this didn’t seem like such bad idea to professional paleontologists; nothing can annihilate a skeleton quite so quickly as a couple of teenagers with an afternoon to spare and a pickaxe. Unfortunately, as usually happens, government agencies went completely overboard with their “protection” schemes while demonstrating cluelessness about the realities of vertebrate fossil collecting. What really got people’s attention was the arrest, trial, conviction and imprisonment of Peter Larson. Larson runs a private paleontological museum in South Dakota. Although he’s not affiliated with a university, he’s widely respected as a professional and publishes just as much as anybody else in the field. When paleontologists actually examined the proposed collecting rules (Paleontological Collecting) they were appalled; vertebrate fossils had to be left in place if possible and all specimens removed had to be individually curated in a museum. I can go out to Pawnee Buttes east of Fort Collins and collect a bushel basket full of Oligocene tortoise shells in a day; no museum in the world has the slightest interest in these things. (At least the restrictions only extended to vertebrate fossils; the regulators presumable had enough sense to realize that “protecting” all the limestone in the US was impracticable).


Vertebrate paleontologists saw themselves serving Federal prison sentences for performing routine field work and screamed in outrage; the Feds got all hissy over the paleontologists’ “ingratitude” and dropped the rules (Amateur paleontologists are still prosecuted from time to time under the Antiquities Act of 1906 and amendments; the courts have repeatedly held that the act is unconstitutionally vague when applied to fossils but that never stops them).


One thing you won’t find in this book, however, is detailed directions on how to get to collecting sites – the authors are presumably hedging their bets. However, the extensive bibliography does list numerous papers and books that do have such directions, apparently if somebody has enough interest to do all the library research necessary they probably will be careful with what they collect.

(Added later - the paleontological collecting rules are back in place; google BLM, NPS, and NFS pages for information)… (mehr)