Hațeg Island

[7] There is no real present-day analog, but overall, the island of Hainan (off the coast of China) is perhaps closest as regards climate, geology and topography, though still not a particularly good match.

Places like Louisiana and Mississippi and other parts of the American Deep South are an even closer climatic and ecological match with a subtropical climate, wet summer season, coverage by rivers, swamps, and deltas, however they are not islands.

The Hungarian paleontologist Franz Nopcsa theorized that "limited resources" found on the island commonly have an effect of "reducing the size of animals" over the generations, producing a localized form of dwarfism.

This seeming contradiction between the seasonally dry climate and tropical plant species can be explained by the fact that tropical plants can thrive in a seasonally monsoonal environment today as long as they have access to sufficient amounts of water year-round, and the Hațeg environment seems to have been dominated by braided rivers and lakes.

Its forelimbs were shorter and stockier than those of Avialae and so visibly incapable of powered flight, which led to this originally incorrect placement within the phylogeny.

[13] Among these animals are included: The Hațeg Island record is preserved as a number of formations, dating from the late Campanian to the Maastrichtian.