Franz Nopsca, the gay Hungarian aristocrat who, as well as studying the dwarf dinosaurs of Transylvania & pushing the radical hypothesis that birds were dinosaurs, was also the first man to hijack a plane, was pretty much the most stylish palaeontologist of all time.

“His involvement with Albania reached its climax just before the outbreak of World War 1, when he hatched an audacious, ill-fated plan to invade the country and become its first monarch.”

Yes. Bajazid Elam Doda, a shepherd he met in 1906, loved for 27 years, travelling round Europe with him on a motorcycle, until finally - impoverished by the loss of his lands - he gave Bajazid tea laced with sleeping powder, shot him, then shot himself. https://twitter.com/brewsternorth/status/1293670239192875008?s=21 https://twitter.com/brewsternorth/status/1293670239192875008

Even more than the rivalry between Marsh & Cope, it’s the most remarkable & ultimately most tragic story in palaeontology. Nopcsa’s achievements were remarkable: the first palaeobotanist & the first to develop the theory of insular dwarfism.

(And it’s Nopcsa, not Nopsca, as in my first tweet - damn autocorrect. Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás, to be precise.)