Books like this do not spring fully formed from the forehead of Jove. Rather, they are most often inspired by the work of others, coming together from fragments of old and new ideas that careen from right brain to left, scrambling and unscrambling through international mail systems and e-mails. Parts die and parts survive as the goals of the book become more tangible.
Little could he have known it, but Franz Baron Nopcsa and his quest to understand the dinosaurs emanating from his backyard have led this American and this Romanian to contemplate how the Transylvanian dinosaurs fit into the Mesozoic scheme of things. Perhaps he’d be pleased by our efforts to ask big questions that demand eclectic and multidisciplinary answers. The Baron had a lot to say in his relatively short life, and we’ve found that it pays to listen to him.
Our studies have taken us many places as we followed in Nopcsa’s footsteps, investigated new dinosaur material in Europe and elsewhere, and stumbled back and forth through the dust-coated central European evolutionary biology of the early twentieth century and the twists and turns of contemporary systematics, developmental biology, and evolutionary theory. In doing so, we have encountered many friends, fellow sojourners, and mentors, all of whom we would like to thank here.
We begin by thanking the members of our field crews—especially Cristi and Puiu from Sânpetru, Bogdan Scarlat (Bob), Ovidiu Hebler (Ova), Dan Şuiagă (Şuşu), Cristina Circo, and Sebastian Domnariu; the Italians Fabio Dalla Vecchia, Davide Rigo, and Cezare Brizio; and, of course, the international team, mostly Dutch: Anne Schulp, Remmert Schouten, Matthew Deeks, Moritz von Graevenitz, Jac and Emile Philip-pens, and Roos de Klerk—for their hard work, most excellent partying, and camaraderie. Mulţumim, li ringraziamo, dank u wel! And a special köszönöm to Zoltán Csiki, master of the Bucharest bones, for his exquisite knowledge, his friendship, and his ever-present “yes, but …”
Mulţumim also to other Romanian colleagues: to Dan Grigorescu from Universitatea din Bucureşti who originally invited the senior author to Romania and shared a few field seasons with him; to Ioan Groza (now deceased) for establishing the dinosaur collections at Muzeul Civilizaşiei Dacice ţi Romane Deva; to Doinel Vulc, the most able paleontologist in Sânpetru; to Nicolae Mészaros (now deceased) and Vlad Codrea from Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca for their own work on the Transylvanian assemblages and also for their help; and to Costin Rădulescu and Petre Samson (both now deceased) from Institutul Speologic “Emil Racoviţă” in Bucharest for making it possible for us to study their spectacular multituberculate material and for their encouragement.
For the possibility of examining the Transylvanian dinosaurs and the Nopcsa archives in their respective institutions, as well as for the pleasure of enjoying summertime in Budapest with them, we thank László Kordos and Jozef Hála from the Magyar Állami Földtani Intézet, and István Fözy and Horváth Csaba from the Magyar Természettudományi Muzeum. Nagyon szépen köszönöm!
Nonetheless, as Nopcsa would have wanted it, the best of all collections of the Late Cretaceous dinosaurs from Transylvania still resides in London, where they were originally presented to the (then) British Museum (Natural History) in 1906 and 1923. At his death, Nopcsa’s paleontological archives were bequeathed to this same institution. Angela C. Milner and Sandra Chapman now mind the Nopcsa fossil and archival collections, and we thank them for the opportunity to feast upon the fossils and memorabilia, including Nopcsa’s “brain.”
Thanks also go to our French colleagues Jean Le Loeuff, Eric Buffetaut, Marie Pincemaille, Yves Laurent, François Sirugue, and Patrick Mechan, mostly from Espéraza, Montpellier, and Aix-en-Provence, for the best cooking and wine that the great land of southern France offers and for sharing with us the Late Cretaceous riches they have gleaned from the rocks at Bellevue, Corbières, and Le Mas d’Azil. Jean Le Loeuff also provided the inspiration for the title of chapter 5. Merci, tout le monde!
We especially thank Angela D. Buscalioni and Francisco Ortega from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid for their wisdom on things crocodilian, for their friendship, and for the ride to Dalí’s hometown—muchas gracias y viva Figueres! We also thank Xabier Pereda-Suberbiola from the Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herrikom Unibertsitatea, Bilbao, and the Université Paris VI for his work on Struthiosaurus and other European ankylosaurs and for his interest in the life and times of Franz Nopcsa. Eskerrik asko, Xabier.
Vienna, Nopcsa’s abode for most of his life, including his university years, is the home of important dinosaur material from the Gosau Beds in eastern Austria. Gernot Rabeder, Norbert Vávra, Doris Nagel, and Karl Rauscher from Universität Wien provided us with the opportunity to study this material and also forged our connections with the various archives in Vienna, which contain the most extensive records of Nopcsa’s life. Vielen dank für alle Ihre Hilfe.
Last, but certainly not least, we are grateful to Jiři Kvaček at the Národní Muzeum in Prague, Kafka’s city of dark contingency, for enabling us to examine the pterosaurs and other fossil material in his care. Děkuju mockrát.
Looking beyond the field and museum collections that immediately relate to Transylvanian dinosaurs and the Baron, there are many people who have helped us to explore the nature of history and to see the tapestry we were constructing from new perspectives. Thanks go to Anne Schulp (again), John Jagt, and Douwe Th. de Graaf (the “Maastricht Guys”), and Marcin Machałski from the Instytut Paleobiologii in Warsaw, for somehow putting up with our demanding, raucous, and often-times unpredictable behavior, all for the honorable sake of creating the traveling museum exhibition called “Dinosaurs, Ammonites, and Asteroids: Life and Death in the Maastrichtian.” We also thank Eric Mulder from the Museum Natura Docet in Denekamp, the Netherlands, for keeping the light shining on the truly Maastrichtian dinosaurs, those from Maastricht.
To Dave Norman from the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge University, thanks for your dinosaur knowledge. To Jack Horner from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, thanks for your encouragement on the Transylvanian and dinosaurian fronts. To Oliver Kerscher for your ever-patient journey through our translation from German to English of Tasnádi-Kubacska’s biography of Nopcsa, and to Robert Elsie, fellow traveler—but from the Albanian side—regarding Nopcsa’s remarkable life, many thanks to you both.
We are especially grateful to the Interlibrary Loan staff at the Johns Hopkins University’s Welch Library, especially Ellen Priebe and Tina Avarelli, for handling a bewildering array of requests—in English, Romanian, German, French, Hungarian, and Serbo-Croatian—on subjects ranging from earthquakes in Italy to Albanian ethnography to dinosaur-avian relationships. Arriving at incredibly regular intervals, these materials have proved to be indispensable to this project.
For financial assistance, we thank the generosity of the U.S. National Research Council, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Dinosaur Society, the Jurassic Foundation, the Paleontological Society International Research Program (Sepkoski Grants), and Muzeul Civilizaţiei Dacice şi Romane Deva (MCDRD). Together, they made possible ten field seasons in the Haţeg Basin, museum research on additional collections of the dinosaurs from Transylvania and elsewhere in Europe, and research at the many Nopcsa archives. We also thank Adriana Pescaru, retired general director, and Silvia Burnaz, head of Secţia de Ştiinţele Naturii, MCDRD, for providing the institutional basis for the successes of the various field seasons conducted by the Joint MCDRD–Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Dinosaur Expeditions.
The National Geographic Society also made it possible for us to join Attila Ősi and his important work on the Late Cretaceous of Iharkút, Hungary. The remains of a host of wonderfully preserved dinosaurs, pterosaurs, crocodilians, and squamates are now coming out of the walls of an open-pit former bauxite mine, and, should this locality continue to yield as abundantly as it does at present, it will become one of the most significant in Europe.
Each of us, of course, has individuals to whom special thanks are due.
Dave Weishampel: First and foremost, I thank Cora Jianu—for your devil’s advocate role as coauthor, for your considerable insight into the geologic, ecological, and evolutionary dynamics of the Transylvanian region and its fauna, and for inviting me to conduct this Transylvanian research with you. Mulţumesc foarte mult, prietena mea. Thanks also go to Wolf-Ernst Reif (deceased) from the University of Tübingen for his tutelage in constructional and theoretical morphology, as well as in the inherent tension between natural laws and contingency in creating history. To Ronald E. Heinrich, even though you may not know it, for hinting that this should not be just another dinosaur book. To friends at JHU—Ken Rose, Mason Meers, Mary Silcox, Jason Mussell, François Therrien, Amy Chew, Tonya Penkrot, Shawn Zack, Matt O’Neil, Jason Organ, Ben Auerbach, Frank Varriale, and Mike Habib—many thanks for your efforts to answer all those bizarre or picky questions I threw at you over the past handful of years. Finally, special thanks go to Nachio Minoura, who made possible my Visiting Professorship at the University of Hokkaido Museum in Sapporo, Japan. I spent the winter months of 1999–2000 there, sliding on the ice to and from his office, enjoying wayward talks over coffee, and sampling the delights of hometown sushi, all the while exploring the worlds of ancient cultures, the delicacy of the natural world, and historical contingency. Dōmo arigatō, Nachio.
Cora Jianu: This is the place for special thanks to my family and friends, especially to my parents, my late grandmother, and my son, Ion—for putting up with all my time away conducting fieldwork and on other work-related travels, and for your understanding, support, and encouragement when I needed it. Thanks also to my friend Bert Boekschoten from Vrije Universiteit at Amsterdam for believing in me. To Professor Vlad Codrea at Universitatea Babeş Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca for early encouragement in my career as a paleontologist. To Professor Anton Fistani from the Universiteti i Shkodrës “Luigj Gurakuqi,” Shkoder, Albania, for being such an accommodating host to me and my friends on our unannounced visit to Shkoder, following in the steps of Franz Nopcsa. It took some investigation to find the street named after the Baron, but we were very pleased when we did! Finally, to Dave Weishampel for teaching me about art, music, evolution, contingency, and cladistics. Dave, thank you for inviting me to write this book with you, and for not giving up on this project; it’s been such an enlightening experience! With your superb illustrations, the book is very much enriched and brought to life.
Ron Heinrich, François Therrien, Zoli Csiki, and Mike Habib read early drafts of this book, and we are especially grateful for their insight, criticism, kindness, and forbearance. Their advice focused our prose, suggested directions, and provided many new contexts for our thoughts. Thanks.
Laurie Anderson kindly provided permission to reproduce some of the lyrics to “Monkey’s Paw.” Apologies go to Salvador Dalí for our “plagiarizing” a portion of his work, The Temptation of St. Anthony, on the dedication page.
Finally, we extend special thanks to the Johns Hopkins University Press, particularly to Vince Burke, for taking on this book and allowing us to expand the project in ways we couldn’t have anticipated from the start. Ideas are the important thing, and Vince gave us the opportunity to weave the dinosaurs of Transylvania through the Late Cretaceous contingencies of the Eastern European world, touching upon art, film, and pinball as we proceeded. The challenge was to make our story clear, insightful, and fun, and for that we thank him for all his help.