The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World: The Definitive Dinosaur Encyclopedia with Stunning Illustrations, Embark on a Prehistoric Quest!

by Steve Brusatte

Nopcsa continued to collect Transylvanian dinosaurs for much of the rest of his life, taking breaks here and there when his services were needed in Albania. He studied them, too, and in doing so was one of the first people who made any attempt to grasp what dinosaurs were like as real animals, not simply bones to be classified. He had a genius when it came to interpreting fossils, and it didn’t take him very long to notice that something was odd about the bones he was finding on his estate. He could tell that they belonged to groups that were common in other parts of the world—a new species that he named Telmatosaurus was a duckbill, a long-necked critter called Magyarosaurus was a sauropod, and he also found the bones of armored dinosaurs.