Cristiano Dal Sasso
Cristiano dal Sasso | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | September 12, 1965 |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Occupation(s) | Scientific popularizer Paleontologist |
Cristiano dal Sasso (born in Monza, 12 September 1965) is an Italian paleontologist.
He has been working since 1991 for the Milan Natural History Museum where is the curator of fossil reptiles and birds. He was the technical coordinator of the excavations of Besano, which brought to light the complete skeleton of a middle Triassic marine reptile of the order of Ichthyosaurs, the Besanosaurus, with embryos in the belly, published in 1996 along with Giovanni Pinna (then director of the Museum). Later, he specialized in the study of Archosaurs, gaining fame as a scientific popularizer.
He studied Scipionyx, the first dinosaur found in Italy at Pietraroja, approximately seventy kilometres northeast of Naples. This small theropod dinosaur, nicknamed "Ciro", generated much publicity because of the unique preservation of large areas of petrified soft tissue and internal organs such as muscles and intestines. The fossil shows many details of these, even the internal structure of some muscle and bone cells.
Cristiano Dal Sasso also described Saltriosaurus, considered as the earliest known Tetanuran of Europe, discovered in 1996 in a quarry in Saltrio, in northern Italy.
Books
- Cristiano Dal Sasso: Animals (Beginnings, Origins & Evolution), Belitha Press, London (1994) ISBN 1-85561-378-6
- Cristiano Dal Sasso: Dinosaurs of Italy, Indiana Univ Pr, Bloomington, Indiana, USA. (2005), ISBN 0-253-34514-6
