LEGACY OF THE GOBI DESERT:
PAPERS IN MEMORY OF
ZOFIA KIELAN-JAWOROWSKA

EDITED BY RICHARD L. CIFELLI and ŁUCJA FOSTOWICZ-FRELIK

Only a year has passed since Professor Kielan-Jaworowska’s death and her image is still vivid in our memory. May it long remain so. She was an unquestionably towering figure in the field of vertebrate paleontology, a personality larger than life, totally devoted to science and practically consumed by it. Nonetheless, while recollecting the Professor it is essential to observe that professional activities never deprived her of being profoundly human. When times called, she did not flinch from doing right even when holding important professional posts; in the moments of test, Zofia showed the highest integrity and she should be remembered as such.

Kielan-Jaworowska’s death left an unfillable void: something was irrevocably lost and cannot be recaptured because Zofia belonged to a world now almost gone, and was molded by different forces than prevail in today’s science, which increasingly resembles a business-like enterprise. Kielan-Jaworowska’s leadership role in the Polish-Mongolian Expeditions places her in the line of celebrated Gobi explorers which begins with Andrews, Granger and Morris.

The volume of Palaeontologia Polonica we now hand over to the readers was supposed to be a birthday gift on occasion of Zofia’s 90th Anniversary; alas, it turned out to be her epitaph. The idea we had in mind was to gather Professor Kielan-Jaworowska’s friends and close collaborators to honor her work and to keep her in that way a little longer with us. We are extremely grateful to all Authors who responded to our first call and offered their works to this volume at such a short notice. Also, we would like to thank those who initially answered us kindly but eventually were not able to contribute.

The present volume includes two kinds of papers: Three opening “eulogies” bring Zofia back to us as a person, and are followed by 14 original scientific contributions, collectively written by 42 colleagues, including the late Percy M. Butler, who also passed away in 2015. The papers span a variety of topics on Mesozoic vertebrates, from an overview of dinosaur findings in Mongolia, to recent discoveries in the Jurassic strata on Spitsbergen, summaries of triconodont diversity and the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic mammaliaform record of Britain, along with a reinterpretation of docodont and shuotheriid dental structure, and new information on metatherian and eutherian mammalian faunas of Asia and North America. A sizeable portion of this volume deals with multituberculates, a group especially dear to Zofia.

We are deeply grateful to all who helped to bring this volume out. In particular, thanks are due to the reviewers: Alyson Brink (Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA), Steve Brusatte (University of Edinburgh, UK), Richard L. Cifelli (University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA), William A. Clemens (University of California at Berkeley, CA, USA), Gloria Cuenca-Bescós (Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain), Brian M. Davis (University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA), Jeffrey G. Eaton (Utah Museum of Natural History, Salt Lake City, UT, USA), Eric G. Ekdale (San Diego State University, CA, USA), Emmanuel Gheerbrant (Museum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, France), David Grossnickle (University of Chicago, IL, USA), Andrew B. Heckert (Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA), Simone Hoffmann (Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA), Jerry Hooker (Natural History Museum, London, UK), Jorn H. Hurum (Naturhistorisk museum, Universitetet i Oslo, Norway), Richard F. Kay (Duke University, Durham, NC, USA), Zhe-Xi Luo (University of Chicago, IL, USA), David Martill (University of Portsmouth, UK), Thomas Martin (Universität Bonn, Germany), Jin Meng (American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA), Wojciech Nemec (Universitetet i Bergen, Norway), Jingmai O’Connor (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China), Tom Rich (Museum Victoria, Melbourne, Australia), Guillermo Rougier (University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA), Irina Ruf (Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum, Frankfurt, Germany), Tom Stidham (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China), Glen W. Storrs (Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA), Corwin Sullivan (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China), and John R. Wible (Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA, USA). Finally, the junior editor is greatly obliged to her US-based counterpart, a wonderful colleague and critic, who from the beginning liberally gave his time to help with the production of this volume, and she hopes he likes the outcome.

The Editors