Ewa Wanda Roniewicz | |
---|---|
Nationality | Polish |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Paleontology |
Institutions | Institute of Paleobiology, Warsaw, Poland |
Ewa Roniewicz is a Polish palaeontologist, known for her work on Mesozoic and Palaeozoic corals [1] and for co-authoring the 1970 description of Deinocheirus mirificus.
She started her academic career in 1964 after receiving a scholarship from the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. By 1968 she had moved on to a master's degree, her graduation date was 1968. From 1972 to 1991 Dr. Roniewicz was employed as an editorial secretary at Acta Palaeontologica Polonica while simultaneously contributing to various research projects. During this time she also received her doctoral degree at Warsaw in 1979. Starting in 1994 Dr. Roniewicz worked as a guest-editor of the Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, this continued until 2006. In 1995 she received her PhD and Doctoral Habilitatus in geology. In 1998 she received grants to co-author several publications, this work continued until 2007. Finally in 2009 she was nominated as professor of palaeontology in the Polish Academy of Sciences. During her career she won the Awards of the Division of Biological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences on multiple occasions, 1978, 1984, 1989.
In 1970, fossils that were discovered by Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska were finally named by Ewa Roniewicz and Halszka Osmólska. They named the long armed dinosaur Deinocheirus mirificus because of the size of its arms. The fossil was found in the Gobi desert, and was significant because no bipedal dinosaur at this time was known to have arms that long. They measured a 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) long and had three fingers instead of two. As a result of this discovery Osmolska and Roniewicz classified Deinocheirus as a member of a new family called the Deinocheiridae in the Carnosauria clade. This discovery had a large impact on the palaeontological community mainly because they had classified a new type of dinosaur that was vastly different from anything paleontologists had discovered at the time. In addition, it was one of the only female-led fossil collecting expeditions at the time.
Ewa Roniewicz conducted the first systematic studies of Jurassic and Triassic corals in Poland. These multi-week annual coral searches took place from the 1950s to 1970s, and spanned the regions of Western Pomerania, Pomeranian glacial gravels, the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, as well as the Świętokrzyskie and Tatra mountain ranges.
Beginning in the 1960s, Roniewicz also traveled for several four-week periods to foreign Academy of Science centers, universities, and other institutions in order to personally engage with geologists and palaeontologists conducting similar research on corals and other materials of Jurassic reef structures. These short-term, so-called "exchange weeks" included visits to Prague, Georgia, and Romania, during which she met with researchers Dr. Helena Eliašová, Prof. Nina S. Bendukidze, and Dr. Aurelia Bărbulescu. She was then able to explore coral outcrops in Bohemia and Moravia, the Caucasus, and Dobrudža. With the aid of an extensive introduction to the geology of Lower Dobrudža by Dr. Bărbulescu, Roniewicz used collected corals to create a monographic study of Oxfordian and Kimmeridgian coral fauna in the area.
Roniewicz's coral research expanded to include the Triassic period in the 1970s. She received funding to study both the Late Jurassic and Late Triassic coral collections of the Pamir region near Dushanbe, Tajikistan for two months in 1974. There she established ongoing cooperation with Dr. Galina Melnikova from the Tajik Academy of Sciences. She was later contacted by Dr. Dragica Turnšek from the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and traveled to Ljubljana in 1979 in order to study Slovenian Triassic coral Collections.
Every few years between 1977 and 1995, Roniewicz was invited to study the large collections of Rhaetian corals at the Natural History Museum in Vienna by Prof. Helmuth Zapfe at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. She supplemented this collection review with expeditions into the Triassic coral-bearing formations of the Gosaukamm area near Adnet, Austria. She also studied the Triassic corals of the Dachstein massif in collaboration with geologists Dr. Harald Lobitzer and Dr. Gerhard W. Mandl from the Geologische Bundesanstalt in Vienna.
In order to complete a collection of Triassic corals for study, Dr. Roniewicz made several returns to the Museum für Naturkunde der Humboldt-Universitaet in Berlin and the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in the years 1975, 1996, and 2005.
Since she began the process of developing entries on fossil and extant corals for the Encyclopedy of Life in 2009, Dr. Roniewicz has continued to contribute entries for an offline taxonomic compendium of Scleractinia corals, Corallosphere.org.
Gallimimus is a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived in what is now Mongolia during the Late Cretaceous period, about seventy million years ago (mya). Several fossils in various stages of growth were discovered by Polish-Mongolian expeditions in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia during the 1960s; a large skeleton discovered in this region was made the holotype specimen of the new genus and species Gallimimus bullatus in 1972. The generic name means "chicken mimic", referring to the similarities between its neck vertebrae and those of the Galliformes. The specific name is derived from bulla, a golden capsule worn by Roman youth, in reference to a bulbous structure at the base of the skull of Gallimimus. At the time it was named, the fossils of Gallimimus represented the most complete and best preserved ornithomimid material yet discovered, and the genus remains one of the best known members of the group.
Deinocheirus is a genus of large ornithomimosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous around 70 million years ago. In 1965, a pair of large arms, shoulder girdles, and a few other bones of a new dinosaur were first discovered in the Nemegt Formation of Mongolia. In 1970, this specimen became the holotype of the only species within the genus, Deinocheirus mirificus; the genus name is Greek for "horrible hand". No further remains were discovered for almost fifty years, and its nature remained a mystery. Two more complete specimens were described in 2014, which shed light on many aspects of the animal. Parts of these new specimens had been looted from Mongolia some years before, but were repatriated in 2014.
Tochisaurus is a genus of small troodontid theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of Mongolia. The type species is Tochisaurus nemegtensis.
Caseosaurus is a genus of saurischian dinosaur that lived approximately 221.5 to 212 million years ago during the latter part of the Triassic Period in what is now Texas, North America. It was a small, lightly-built, bipedal, ground-dwelling carnivore, and could grow up to 2 m (6.6 ft) long.
The Nemegt Formation is a geological formation in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, dating to the Late Cretaceous. The formation consists of river channel sediments and contains fossils of fish, turtles, crocodilians, and a diverse fauna of dinosaurs, including birds.
Sacisaurus is a silesaurid dinosauriform from the Late Triassic (Norian) Caturrita Formation of southern Brazil. The scientific name, Sacisaurus agudoensis, refers to the city where the species was found, Agudo in the Rio Grande do Sul state, whereas Sacisaurus refers to Saci, a famous one-legged creature from Brazilian mythology, because among the dozens of fossil material unearthed, 35 right femora were collected whereas only 1 left femur was found.
Deinocheiridae is an extinct family of ornithomimosaurian dinosaurs, living in Asia and the Americas from the Albian until the Maastrichtian. The family was originally named by Halszka Osmólska and Roniewicz in 1970, including only the type genus Deinocheirus. In a 2014 study by Yuong-Nam Lee and colleagues and published in the journal Nature, it was found that Deinocheiridae was a valid family. Lee et al. found that based on a new phylogenetic analysis including the recently discovered complete skeletons of Deinocheirus, the type genus, as well as Garudimimus and Beishanlong, could be placed as a successive group, with Beishanlong as the most primitive and Deinocheirus as most derived. The family Garudimimidae, named in 1981 by Rinchen Barsbold, is now a junior synonym of Deinocheiridae as the latter family includes the type genus of the former. The group existed from 115 to 69 million years ago, with Beishanlong living from 115 to 100 mya, Garudimimus living from 98 to 83 mya, and Deinocheirus living from 71 to 69 mya. Other genera included are Paraxenisaurus, and possibly Harpymimus and Hexing.
Eocursor is genus of basal ornithischian dinosaur that lived in what is now South Africa during the Early Jurassic. Remains of this animal have been found in the Upper Elliot Formation and it is among the most completely known early ornithischians, shedding new light on the origin of the group.
Halszka Osmólska was a Polish paleontologist who had specialized in Mongolian dinosaurs.
Teresa Maryańska was a Polish paleontologist who specialized in Mongolian dinosaurs, particularly pachycephalosaurians and ankylosaurians. Peter Dodson states that in 1974 Maryanska together with Halszka Osmólska were among the first "women to describe new kinds of dinosaurs". She is considered not only as one of Poland's but also one of the world's leading experts on dinosaurs.
Zofia Emilia Kielan-Jaworowska was a Polish paleobiologist. In the mid-1960s, she led a series of Polish-Mongolian paleontological expeditions to the Gobi Desert. She was the first woman to serve on the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences. The most notable dinosaur species she discovered include: Deinocheirus and Gallimimus while Kielanodon and Zofiabaatar were named in her honour.
The Museum of Evolution of Polish Academy of Sciences is the display area of the natural history museum in Warsaw, Poland. It is the public front of the Muzeum i Instytut Zoologii or Zoology Museum and the Instytut Paleobiologii or Paleobiology Institute. It is based at the Palace of Culture and Science.
The Fleming Fjord Formation, alternatively called the Fleming Fjord Group is an Upper Triassic geological formation in the northeastern coast of Jameson Land, Greenland. It consists of terrestrial sediments and is known for its fossil content.
Beishanlong is a genus of giant ornithomimosaurian theropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of China. It is the second-largest ornithomimosaur discovered, only surpassed by the related Deinocheirus.
The Zagaje Formation is a Latest Triassic-Early Jurassic Epoch (Rhaetian-Sinemurian) geologic formation located mostly in Poland with layers also exposed in north Germany. This unit is known for its diverse Ichnofossil assemblages, with traces of invertebrates along vertebrate footprints, as well plants, large coal accumulations, invertebrate remains and ichnofossils. The Zagaje Formation correlates with The lower part of the Höganäs Formation in Scania, as well the Munkerup Member and the Gassum Formation in Denmark.
Susan Elizabeth Evans is a British palaeontologist and herpetologist. She is the author or co-author of over 100 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.
Smok is an extinct genus of large carnivorous archosaur. It lived during the latest Triassic period. Its remains have been found in Lisowice, southern Poland. The only species is Smok wawelski and was named in 2012. It is larger than any other known predatory archosaur from the Late Triassic or Early Jurassic of central Europe. The relation of Smok to other archosaurs has not yet been thoroughly studied; it may be a rauisuchid, prestosuchid, an ornithosuchid pseudosuchian or a theropod dinosaur.
This timeline of ornithomimosaur research is a chronological listing of events in the history of paleontology focused on the ornithomimosaurs, a group of bird-like theropods popularly known as the ostrich dinosaurs. Although fragmentary, probable, ornithomimosaur fossils had been described as far back as the 1860s, the first ornithomimosaur to be recognized as belonging to a new family distinct from other theropods was Ornithomimus velox, described by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1890. Thus the ornithomimid ornithomimosaurs were one of the first major Mesozoic theropod groups to be recognized in the fossil record. The description of a second ornithomimosaur genus did not happen until nearly 30 years later, when Henry Fairfield Osborn described Struthiomimus in 1917. Later in the 20th century, significant ornithomimosaur discoveries began occurring in Asia. The first was a bonebed of "Ornithomimus" asiaticus found at Iren Debasu. More Asian discoveries took place even later in the 20th century, including the disembodied arms of Deinocheirus mirificus and the new genus Gallimimus bullatus. The formal naming of the Ornithomimosauria itself was performed by Rinchen Barsbold in 1976.
Jerzy Dzik is a Polish paleontologist.
Denise Sigogneau-Russell is a French palaeontologist who specialises in mammals from the Mesozoic, particularly from France and the UK. She is currently based at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle.