Dan Grigorescu

University of Bucharest | Unibuc · Laboratory of Paleontology

How modern humans dispersed into Eurasia and Australasia, including the number of separate expansions and their timings, is highly debated [1, 2]. Two categories of models are proposed for the dispersal of non-Africans: (1) single dispersal, i.e., a single major diffusion of modern humans across Eurasia and Australasia [3-5]; and (2) multiple dispe...

Objectives: The morphology of the human bony labyrinth is thought to preserve a strong phylogenetic signal and to be minimally, if at all, affected by postnatal processes. The form of the semicircular canals is considered a derived feature of Neanderthals and different from the modern human anatomy. Among other hominins, European Middle Pleistocen...

Four localities in the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of the Haţeg Basin (in order of discovery, Tuştea, Toteşti-baraj, Nălaţ-Vad and Livezi) have yielded clutches of megaloolithid eggs. Egg morphology and size, eggshell thickness, external ornamentation and internal microstructure, pore density and geometry, as well as morphology of the clutches...

LETTER TO THE EDITOR Cioclovina fractures: Reply to Soficaru and Trinkaus: Perimortem versus postmortem damage: The recent case of Cioclovina 1, Am J Phys Anthropol 2020 172, 135–139 In our recent article (Kranioti et al., 2019), we conducted an exhaustive investigation of the fracture patterns presented by the Upper Paleolithic calvaria from Ciocl...

The Haţeg region of Transylvania-Romania, known as the "Haţeg Country", due to its specific character as a region wholly encircled by mountains, has been renowned for over a century for its palaeontological geosites from which dinosaur bones of several species, dinosaur eggs and hatchlings, were unearthed along with numerous other taxa representati...

The Cioclovina (Romania) calvaria, dated to ca. 33 cal ka BP and thought to be associated with the Aurignacian lithic industry, is one of the few relatively well preserved representatives of the earliest modern Europeans. Two large fractures on this specimen have been described as taphonomic modifications. Here we used gross and virtual forensic cr...

Résumé: Les œufs de dinosaures de type mégaloolithide, fréquents dans plusieurs sites de Maastrichtien du Bassin de Hațeg, et sujet de nombreux articles dédiés aux caractéristiques des œufs et des coquilles et de la taphonomie, sont examinés ici du point de vue des aspects ultrastructurales de la microscopie électronique à balayage (MEB), par compa...

We describe and interpret a posterior mandibular symphysis of a very large azhdarchid pterosaur. The specimen LPB (FGGUB) R.2347 exhibits a series of morphological characters present in both azhdarchid and tapejarid pterosaurs, suggesting a more basal position within the clade Azhdarchidae. This fossil was collected from Maastrichtian continental d...

The association between Megaloolithus cf. siruguei eggs and hadrosaurid (Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus) hatchlings that was reported 25 years ago in Maastrichtian mudstone from Tuştea (Haţeg Basin, Romania) is reviewed in this paper. Subsequent to the original descriptions of this association, eggshell micro- and ultrastructure have been compared w...

Modern humans arrived in Europe ~45,000 years ago, but little is known about their genetic composition before the start of farming ~8,500 years ago. Here we analyse genome-wide data from 51 Eurasians from ~45,000-7,000 years ago. Over this time, the proportion of Neanderthal DNA decreased from 3-6% to around 2%, consistent with natural selection ag...

How modern humans dispersed into Eurasia and Australasia, including the number of separate expansions and their timings, is highly debated [1, 2]. Two categories of models are proposed for the dispersal of non-Africans: (1) single dispersal, i.e., a single major diffusion of modern humans across Eurasia and Australasia [3–5]; and (2) multiple dispe...

2 nd Workshop of IGCP 609: Climate-environmental deteriorations during greenhouse phases: Causes and consequences of short-term Cretaceous sea-level change and EARTHTIME-EU Sequence Stratigraphy Workshop: Eustasy and sequence stratigraphy in the Cretaceous Greenhouse GUIDE OF FIELD TRIP 2, August 28 -31 Marine deposits (Urgonian and Gosau Facies) a...

Endocasts provide evidence on size and shape characteristics, blood supply trajectories, and neurological features of the brain, allowing comparative analyses of fossil hominins crucial to our understanding of human brain evolution. Here, we assess the morphological features of the virtual endocast of the Cioclovina Upper Paleolithic calvarium, one...

Endocasts provide evidence on size and shape characteristics, blood supply trajectories, and neurological features of the brain, allowing comparative analyses of fossil hominins crucial to our understanding of human brain evolution. Here, we assess the morphological features of the virtual endocast of the Cioclovina Upper Paleolithic calvarium, one...

In order to constrain the age of the Upper Cretaceous continental Densuş-Ciula Formation from the Haţeg basin, South Carpathians, and correlate it with the other continental unit that occurs in the region, the Sânpetru Formation, we separated and dated by the K-Ar method biotites and amphiboles from volcanoclastic deposits. The mineral phases analy...

The fossil-bearing Maastrichtian continental deposits of the Haţeg Basin have been assigned to different lithostratigraphic units and subunits based on their lithology and fossil content; among these, the vertebrate fossil-and volcanoclast-bearing beds from the north–western part of the basin were referred to the Middle Member of the Densuş-Ciula F...

Islands are fascinating natural laboratories of evolution. One much debated theme among evolutionary ecologists is whether there is an ‘island rule’, the observation that large animals tend to become smaller and small animals larger. Franz Nopcsa was the first, in 1914, to suggest that the latest Cretaceous dinosaurs from Haţeg, Romania were an isl...

This study represents the first extensive investigation of source-areas of the Maastrichtian continental deposits of the Haţeg basin using heavy mineral associations. The heavy mineral associations consist of garnet, hematite, magnetite, ilmenite, rutile, staurolite, kyanite, epidote, apatite, titanite, tourmaline and zircon. The general pattern in...

The Maastrichtian Budurone mesofossil flora includes 19 different types of angiosperm fruits and seeds. All fruits and seeds are small, 0.6–2.6 mm long and 0.5–1.9 mm broad, with calculated fruit volume ranging between 0.08 and 3.59 mm3 and seed volume between 0.08 and 0.79 mm3. The fossils show great similarity with other Cretaceous angiosperm fos...

Located in the South Carpathians in Romania, the Haţeg Basin contains a thick sequence of Maastrichtian continental deposits yielding a rich dinosaur and mammalian fauna. Stable isotope analyses of both calcretes and dinosaur, crocodilian and turtle remains from two localities (Tuştea and Sibişel) were integrated in order to reconstruct environment...

The uppermost Cretaceous continental deposits of the Haţeg Basin (SW Romania) have yielded a high-diversity vertebrate assemblage, including the “dwarf” insular dinosaurs of Nopcsa. In 1902, Franz Nopcsa was the first to comment on the preservation patterns of vertebrate fossils, suggesting that the most important fossil accumulations, which he sim...

The oxygen isotopic compositions of biogenic apatite from crocodiles, turtles and dinosaurs, and their relationship to climate and physiology have been evidenced by several studies (Barrick and Showers, 1995; Kolodny et al., 1996; Barrick et al., 1999; Fricke and Rogers, 2000; Stoskopf et al., 2001; Straight et al., 2004; Amiot et al., 2007). To da...

During the Late Cretaceous time, along the Carpathians, Apuseni and the Eastern Alps, on the top of the upper plate, sedimentation continued in the so called "Gosau type" basins formed during syn-collisional extension. The facies association of Cretaceous Gosau sediments may vary from terrestrial alluvial sediments to turbiditic ones, with stratigr...

Since 1991 when the coinciding occurrence of megaloolithid eggs and hatchlings of the hadrosaurid Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus was suggested by few limb bone remains found close to the first discovered eggs in the Hateg Basin, tens of eggs grouped in clutches together with neonate bones were unearthed within the place that become “Tustea nesting s...

Motto L'hommage d'un paleontologue à Charles Darwin, pour le bicentenaire de sa naissance. Abstract. Geological and paleontological premises of the Darwinian Theory. Geology and Paleontology had an essential role in opening Charles Darwin's eyes and mind on the " transmutation " of species. Adam Sedgwick, Charles Lyell and up to a point, Richard Ow...

The origin of the collections of Palaeontology at the University of Bucharest is inseparably linked to the beginnings of Geology in this university. Three professors of Geology and Palaeontology have contributed decisively to the birth and development of collections: Gregoriu Ştefănescu the pioneer, Sabba Ştefănescu the organizer and Ion Simionescu...

In the Haţeg basin, South Carpathians, a thick continental sequence accumulated during the Maastrichtian. The alluvial sequences are characterized by the formation of paleosol horizons developed on the alluvial plain. In order to investigate the environmental signal stable isotope and mineralogical investigations have been carried out on smectites...

A new site with large remains of megaloolithid dinosaur eggs in the Maastrichtian of the Haţeg Basin, within the Densuş-Ciula Formation was recorded in 2005, near the village of Livezi. The shape and size of the eggs as well as the thickness, external and internal structures of the eggshells from Livezi are practically identical to those found at T...

Microvertebrate fossil sites contain mixed remains of different aquatic and terrestrial taxa, characterized by the small size of the skeletal elements, dominance of the resistant skeletal parts, high degree of disarticulation and extensive taphonomic modifications. Microvertebrate sites are useful for paleoecological reconstructions in continental...

The current modern human origins debate centers on the possibility and degree of admixture between indigenous archaic humans and modern human populations migrating out of Africa into Europe and Asia in the Late Pleistocene. Evidence for such admixture must be sought in the earliest fossil record of modern humans outside Africa, as it is those popul...

Hatchling remains of the hadrosaur Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus were found associated with megaloolithid eggs in the Tuştea nesting site, Haţeg Basin, Romania. Despite the small sample size, these remains yield the first data concerning the early post-natal ontogenetic development of this basal hadrosaur; the analyzed limb bones (humerus, ulna, fe...

The rich and diverse Maastrichtian continental vertebrate fauna from the Haţeg Basin, Romania, included until recently only one crocodilian taxon (Allodaposuchus precedens), along which other taxa were also cited in the last decade (Doratodon, Acynodon, Musturzabalsuchus). This assemblage is noteworthy since it includes taxa with a wide European di...

A few disarticulated odontocete (Cetacea: Odontoceti) fossils have been found at Comăneşti in western Romania. The locality had hitherto yielded only brackish mollusks and terrestrial micromammals. The entire stratigraphic section was divided by Radulescu & Samson (in Feru et al., 1980) into two local biostratigraphic units: Comăneşti-1 (Sarmatian)...

The holotype of Sarmatodelphis moldavicus Kirpichnikov, 1954, is an incomplete skull and a cervical vertebra from the Bessarabian Stage (late middle to early late Miocene) of Kishinev, Republic of Moldavia. Sarmatodelphis moldavicus is confirmed as a small distinct species of kentriodontid (Cetacea: Odontoceti: Delphinoidea) in the subfamily Pithan...

D. 2005. — A new Crossognathus (Actinopterygii, Teleostei) from the Lower Cretaceous of Romania with comments on Crossognathidae relationships. Geodiversitas 27 (1) : 5-16. ABSTRACT Crossognathus danubiensis n. sp., known by a single specimen from the middle Albian of the vicinity of Giurgiu, south Romania, is described. The new species differs fro...

Putative bird remains were reported relatively early from the Maastrichtian continental beds of the Haţeg Basin. They were referred to as Elopteryx nopcsai Andrews, 1913 based on material collected by Nopcsa (femora, tibiotarsi), diagnosed as a large-size cormorant-like bird. Subsequently, the tibiotarsi were redescribed as belonging to two new tax...

Barbatodon transylvanicus is the first mammal described from the Mesozoic of Romania, based on an isolated molar found in the Maastrichtian continental deposits near Pui village. This tooth was subject of controversies since its discovery, being considered either a first upper or lower molar by different authors, even receiving different names. The...

The Haţeg basin, South Carpathians, Romania, contains a thick sequence of Maastrichtian continental deposits from which a rich dinosaur and mammal fauna is known. Field data as well as mineralogical and stable isotope analyses from three representative profiles were integrated in order to reconstruct environmental conditions during Maastrichtian ti...

Cercetările asupra depozitelor continentale cu resturi ale unor dinozauri de la sfârşitul perioadei cretacice din cadrul Bazinului Haţeg au o istorie de peste o sută de ani. Primele cercetări asupra faunei cu dinozauri din Bazinul Haţeg sunt datorate lui Franz von Nopcsa (1877-1933), contribuţiile sale în domeniul paleontologiei sistematice, a evol...

The dinosaurs of Romania are exclusively Cretaceous. Lowermost Cretaceous dinosaurs come from a bauxite mine in the Bihor county (northwest Romania) that has yielded thousands of disarticulated bones. Uppermost Cretaceous dinosaurs have been known from the Hateg Basin (south Transylvania) since the end of the 19th century, mostly as bone concentrat...

Pterosaur remains from the Late Cretaceous of the Hateg Basin of western Romania were reported by Nopcsa as early as 1899. Recent discoveries from the Late Maastrichtian Densuş-Ciula Formation include the giant azhdarchid Hatzegopteryx thambema, the holotype of which, consisting of skull elements and a humerus from the Vǎlioara locality, is describ...

The dinosaurs of Romania are exclusively Cretaceous. Lowermost Cretaceous dinosaurs come from a bauxite mine in the Bihor county (northwest Romania) that has yielded thousands of disarticulated bones. Uppermost Cretaceous dinosaurs have been known from the Haţeg Basin (south Transylvania) since the end of the 19th century, mostly as bone concentrat...

A new giant pterosaur, Hatzegopteryx thambema, nov.gen., nov.sp., from the Maastrichtian Densuş-Ciula Formation of Romania is remarkable for its very large size (estimated wing span > or = 12 m) and for the robustness of its large skull, which may have been nearly 3 m long. The stout skull bones contrast with the usually thin and slender skull elem...