STL Science Center

STL Science Center

09 April 2013

Paper Day!

Everyone loves paper day. Today we have scholarly papers on Late Jurassic stegosaurs as well as mentions in evidence of early stegosaurs in China. A lot of the stegosaur papers that mention Gigantspinosaurus are fauna surveys of China or the overall Jurassic landscape. The history of the stegosaurs is actually quite well documented with body assemblages having been reviewed many times over the history of knowledge of the stegosaur family. Stegosaurs are a very popular family of dinosaurs, even more than most people seem to notice. The sheer number of papers on stegosaurs is astounding, however, not many of those hit specific specimens from China in great amounts of depth. Regardless, a pretty good overall picture of China in the Jurassic as well as the life of Gigantspinosaurus can be obtained by reading portions of the papers that deal with the overall behavior and the land of China during the Jurassic. The most unfortunate thing about trying to find stegosaur papers about Gigantspinosaurus is that the original paper, a 1986 paper by Gao and Huang, is in Chinese and not published online anywhere. So, in lieu of that, read the four papers, if you are feeling up to it, to get a good picture of Gigantspinosaurus and their world and have a great day!

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