ZoomDinosaurs.com Dinosaur and Paleontology Dictionary

WARM BLOODED Warm blooded (or endothermic) animals generate their own body heat to maintain their body temperature. Birds and mammals are endothermic.

WEALDEN FORMATION The Wealden Formation is an area in southeastern England (including the Isle of Wight) that had yielded many fossils, iincluding dinosaurs. Paleontologist Gideon Mantell found Iguanodon there in 1825. The Wealden sedimentary rock dates from the Early Cretaceous period, when the area had fresh and brackish water (slightly salty) sediments.

WEGENER, ALFRED L. Alfred Lothar Wegener (1880-1930), the German geologist and meteorologist, proposed the theory of continental drift in his 1915 book, On the Origin of Continents and Oceans. This theory states that parts of the Earth's crust slowly drift atop a liquid core. The fossil record overwhelmingly supports and gives credence to the theory of continental drift (and that of plate tectonics). He proposed the existence of the supercontinent Pangaea, and named it (Pangaea means "all the land" in Greek). Wegener froze to death while heading an expedition crossing the Greenland ice cap in 1930.

WETMORE, ALEXANDER Alexander Wetmore (1886-1978) was an ornithologist who was an expert on the birds and bird fossils of Central and South America. He named many species of fossil birds, including Plegadornis, 1962 (now Angelinornis). He was put in charge of the National Museum (the Smithsonian), the National Gallery of Art, and the National Zoo in 1925. He collected a lot of birds (which were stuffed for the Smithsonian's collection) and fossils. In addition to his field work and administrative duties, he was famous for being extremely formal. While in the rainforests collecting specimens, he would always wear a tie, and he insisted that the tents, chairs and tables were always arranged perfectly in a particular linear fashion. The Cretaceous Period fossil bird Alexornis (meaning "Alex's bird") was named by Pierce Brodkorb in 1976 in honor of Wetmore.

WIFFEN, JOAN Joan Wiffen is a self-trained amateur paleontologist who pioneered dinosaur hunting in New Zealand. Her discoveries, beginning in 1974, greatly changed scientists' views of New Zealands' paleontological history. Wiffen discovered fragmentary fossils of late Cretaceous period dinosaurs, including an ankylosaur (probably a nodosaur), a carnosaur, and a sauropod. These are the first dinosaurs found on New Zealand; it had been previously thought that no dinosaurs had lived on this long-isolated island. Wiffen's discoveries are from Mangahouanga, North Island, New Zealand. Joan Wiffen and her husband M. A. (Pont) Wiffen have also found mosasaurs (Mosasaurus flemingi, Prognathodon overtoni, Rikisaurus tehoensis, etc.), a plesiosaur (a plesiosaurid), a pterosaur, a protostegid (large marine turtle), and many other fossils on New Zealand.

WILLIAMSONIA Williamsonia is a fossil plant that thrived from the Triassic period through the Cretaceous period. Williamsonia was a bennettitalean (a cycadeoidphyte, primitive gymnosperm that resembled cycads but was not a cycad). Williamsonia had a long, thin, branching, woody trunk covered with spirals of broken-off leaf scars. It was up to 6.5 ft (2 m) tall.

WILLISTON, SAMUEL W. Samuel Wendell Williston (1851-1918) was a vertebrate paleontologist (specializing in ancient reptiles), dipterologist (a scientist who studies flies), author, medical doctor, and professor. He served as assistant to Othniel Marsh at the Yale Peabody Museum from 1876 to 1890. Williston searched for dinosaur fossils for Marsh in Colorado and Wyoming.

Willo Willo is the nickname of a Thescelosaurus fossil whose fossilized, four-chambered heart was found, perhaps indicating this dinosaur was warm-blooded. This dinosaur was dubbed Willo after the wife of the of the ower of the ranch where it was found. Willo was found in 1993 near Buffalo, South Dakota. Thescelosaurus (meaning "Marvelous lizard") was a bipedal, plant-eating dinosaur whose Willo dates from the late Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago. It had a small head, a bulky body, a long, pointed tail and short arms. Willo was a hypsilophodontid and an ornithischian dinosaur about 13 feet (4 m) long, weighing 665 pounds (300 kg). Thescelosaurus was named by paleontologist Gilmore in 1913. The type species is T. neglectus.

WOOLLY MAMMOTH Woolly Mammoths (scientific name Mammuthus primigenius) are extinct herbivorous mammals that had long, dense, dark black hair and underfur, long, curved tusks, a fatty hump, a long proboscis (nose), and large ears. They lived in the tundras of Asia, Europe, and North America. They lived from the Pleistocene to the early Holocene epoch (about 10,000 years ago), millions of years after the dinosaurs went extinct. They are closely related to modern-day Indian elephants. They were about 11.5 feet (3.5 m) long, 9.5 feet (2.9 m) tall at the shoulder and weighed about 3 tons (2.75 tonnes). The tusks were used for protection, in interspecies dominance, and for digging in the snow of the ice ages for grass and other food. Much of our knowledge of mammoths is from cave drawings found in France and Spain and from mummified mammoths found in Siberian ice! (Classification: Family Elephantidae)

WOOLLY RHINO Coelodonta, the woolly rhino, is from the Pleistocene epoch (which lasted from 1.8-0.1 million years ago) and survived the last ice age. It belongs to the family Rhinocerotids, which includes modern-day rhinos. This plant-eater was about 11 feet (3.5 m) long. It had two horns on its snout, the lower one larger than the one between its eyes (about 3 feet (1 m) long). It had long hair, small ears, short, thick legs, and a stocky body. Its fossils have been found in Europe (Britain) and Asia (eastern Siberia). Its shape is known from prehistoric cave drawings! Family Rhinocerotidae.

WUERHOSAURUS (pronounced woo-AYR-hoh-SAWR-us) Wuerhosaurus was a late stegosaurid )a plated plant-eater) dinosaur that was found in Wuerho, Mongolia, China. It was about 27 feet (8.1 m) long and was similar to Stegosaurus, but had smaller plates and front legs, wider hips, and a shorter body. It was a plant-eater that lived during the early Cretaceous period, about 135-120 million years ago. Wuerhosaurus was named in 1973 by the Chinese dinosaurologist Dong Zhiming.

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