Written Dinosaurs

Gastroliths in dinosaurs are well known from many different genera and many different time periods. They are somewhat rare, as are all fossils, but they are most definitely well known. Gasparinisaura are one of those dinosaurs that have well documented gastroliths. In 2008 those gastroliths were discussed by Cerda. His paper describes the stones, their purpose, and the implications they provide to the diet of Gasparinisaura. The image at left is from the paper and has been released on Wikipedia. Cerda is a professional when it comes to Gasparinisaura. He also had a hand in describing the microstructure of Gasparinisaura bone in Cerda and Chinsamy (2012). The original knowledge of the dinosaur came to the general public through the work of Coria and Salgado (1996), but new material has been unearthed since that time. That new material was again described by these two scientists, but in Salgado et al. (1997). The latter two papers kind of speak for themselves and do not need to be detailed ahead of time.