Myth of Dwarf Dinos in Dracula Country Confirmed

Myth of Dwarf Dinos in Dracula Country Confirmed
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News


June 13, 2008 -- In 1900, the sister of an eccentric Austro-Hungarian aristocrat named Baron von Nopsca found a tiny bone on the baron's family estate in Transylvania, a historical region in present-day Romania. The baron, who was a dinosaur buff, identified the bone as belonging to a dwarf dino that likely once lived on an island in the region.

The motorcycle-riding baron's outrageous theories were ridiculed and largely dismissed, but now new evidence suggests his proposed island of dwarf dinosaurs did indeed exist in the land of the mythical, blood-drinking Count Dracula.

"Bram Stoker's [Dracula] tale is without a very sustainable historical background, but that is not the case here," lead researcher Vlad Codrea told Discovery News.

Dwarfed Bones Support the Claims

Codrea, a professor of biology and geology at University Babes-Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and colleague Pascal Godefroit recently found several bones belonging to Zalmoxes shqiperorum, an herbivorous dinosaur with forelimbs that were much shorter than its hindlimbs.

The findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol.

"Obviously it was a dwarf dinosaur," said Codrea, who compared the dinosaur to its Rhabdodon relatives from southern France and northern Spain. Rhabdodon, meaning "fluted tooth," measured just over 14 feet long, which, in itself, is a relatively small size for a dinosaur. Zalmoxes, on the other hand, was only 7 to 10 feet long.

The dwarf dinosaur has been classified as belonging to the iguanodont dinosaur group. These Mid Jurassic to Late Cretaceous animals included duck-billed dinos. Some members of the group could weigh up to eight tons and reach 50 feet in length.

Codrea and Godefroit unearthed the newly found bones in a red clay deposit at the Jibou Formation in Somes Odorhei, Romania.

More Mini Dinosaurs

The small Romanian dinosaur was apparently not a loner.

"Zalmoxes had in Transylvania select dinosaur company," Codrea said. "All were dwarves."

He explained that after the initial discovery on Nopsca's estate, the baron set off on his motorcycle to excavate various parts of his homeland. Over the years he found bones belonging to multiple dwarfed species.

These included a sauropod named Magyarosaurus dacus, which looked like a tiny version of a brontosaurus or diplodocus, and the ankylosaur Strutiosaurus transilvanicus, whose body was covered by many tiny bones that formed a protective shield.

A duck-billed dinosaur called Telmatosaurus transylvanicus was also excavated in the area, along with several carnivorous dinos, such as Velociraptorinae indet, Euronychodon and Paronychodon.

The Island Effect

Although many scientists scoffed at the notion of tiny dinosaurs inhabiting Transylvania, imminent paleontologist David Weishampel, fresh out of graduate school, became intrigued by the baron's finds, which he investigated first-hand in Romania.

Weishampel, who now works in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University, came to the conclusion that Nopsca was right -- very small dinosaurs really did live in Romania during the Late Cretaceous (around 70 to 65 million years ago).

He also agreed with the baron's theory that life in isolation on an island, which Weishampel has named Hateg Island, led to the dino dwarfism.

"Hateg was an eastern European island that existed throughout most of the Cretaceous," Weishampel told Discovery News. "It was colonized by the dinosaurs, turtles, crocodiles and various other animals that lived in subtropical to temperate shallow marine environments."

The new research suggests Hateg Island might have connected to mainland Transylvania at one point on the northeastern side, but scientists are still piecing together the region's geological history.

What is clear, however, is that the dinosaurs must have evolved away from other parts of Europe, since such isolated groups tend to be smaller or larger than normal, due to condensed ecosystems that result in size extremes.

On the Other End of the Scale

A few years ago, two of Codrea's colleagues from Bucharest, along with French paleontologist Eric Buffetaud, described "a new giant pterosaur" from Cretaceous Transylvania that was "remarkable for its very large size and for the robustness of its large skull."

The new pterosaur turned out to have a wingspan of 40 feet or more. Its scientific name, Hatzegopteryx thambema, appropriately means "Hateg Island Monster."

The flying reptile's head alone was nearly 10 feet long. Its skull was so long that Buffetaud's team wondered how the creature could have ever taken flight, but the researchers discovered that thin bones enclosing small air pockets gave the monster "strength and lightness."

Recreations of Hateg Island now therefore take on quite a psychedelic dream-like picture, with dwarf Transylvania dinosaurs living in relative tropical splendor, while flying monstrous reptiles swoop overhead.

Codrea explained that the pterosaur originally came as "an intruder, a visitor arrived from far away areas," and could fly over large distances that prevented it from locking into the island miniaturizing pattern of evolution.

The Baron's Tragic Ending

Baron von Nopsca did not live to see his theories validated.

He embarked on a motorcycle tour of Italy and Europe with his lover and secretary, Bayazid Doda, an Albanian Muslim, seated in his sidecar. The two men ran out of money and cut their journey short in Vienna where, in a rage, the baron drugged Doda's tea to render him unconscious. He then shot Doda before turning the gun on himself in 1933 when he was 56 years old.

Despite the baron's inner demons, other researchers now mostly support his theories, which included not only his work on dinosaurs, but also plate tectonics. Weishampel believes his work was so important that he's taken a year off to study it further and to write a related book.

Codrea and his colleague are also still exploring Transylvania's dinosaurs. They plan to publish information on even more finds there soon.

"I'm sure that Nopsca would be pleased about our discoveries, if he were alive," Codrea said. "He was an enthusiastic paleontologist and he believed in his research."

He added, "Sometimes, when I'm in the field, I have the strange sensation that he is somewhere near…"



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