Monday, May 08, 2006

Dave Weishampel Interview

The Johns Hopkins Newsletter as a short interview with Dr. Dave Weishampel conducted by Sam Engel. Here’s an excerpt:

"I'm not one of those gifted namers of dinosaurs. Most recently I named something called Zalmoxes. It's a fat, yet reasonably small, herbivorous dinosaur, also an ornithopod, and it comes from Transylvania. Zalmoxes was a major deity of the Dacian people, who are thought to be the original inhabitants of Transylvania. Zalmoxes advocated things like vegetarianism, and my guys a plant-eater, and he was supposed to be the god of the underworld, and we had to dig him up. It's a lovely guy. It was a real thrill. Transylvanian dinosaurs come out in dribs and drabs out of the rock and so it was really nice to be able to create the animal from isolated parts."