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Late Cretaceous plesiosaurs. Large stones were also associated with sauropod skel-
etons excavated in the 1870s, although the people digging out these dinosaurs did
not call these “gastroliths,” just “stones.”
Mostofthecreditforthelinkingofgastrolithswithsomefunctionindinosaurs
wasbestoweduponpaleontologistBarnumBrown,whowasdoublyfamousforori-
ginally naming
Tyrannosaurus rex
and wearing full-length furcoats while conduct-
ing field research. Sometime around 1900, Brown noticed a collection of rounded
cobblesinsideahadrosaurskeletonthatheidentifiedas“
Claosaurus
.”Heimagined
that these stones might be similar to those found in plesiosaur skeletons, which he
discussedinabriefpaperpublishedin1904.In1907,Brownfollowedupthisstudy
with another paper on dinosaur gastroliths, which he very simply titled “Gastro-
liths.”(Tothisday,nooneknowsifBrown'sbrevitywasadirectaffronttotheverb-
ose titles employed by the previous generation of Victorian-era scientists.)
Later, it turned out that Brown was wrong on two counts. For one, the “gast-
roliths” in this particular dinosaur were probably river stones that washed into the
body cavity of the hadrosaur soon after it died. Second, the hadrosaur was misid-
entified and instead was a species of
Edmontosaurus
, mentioned in the first chapter
and taken literally by a
T. rex
when taunting it by saying, “You want a piece of
this?” Brown was also beaten to press on dinosaur gastroliths by a not-as-fam-
ous paleontologist, G.L. Cannon, who in 1906 published a short paper with twice
as many words in its title as Brown's: “Sauropodan Gastroliths.” This was the
first publication to mention gastroliths in sauropods, and it was an idea that has
stuck around since. Other paleontologists, such as Brown's protégé Roland T. Bird,
laterpromotedthissupposedassociationbetweensauropodsandgastroliths.Conse-
quently paleontologists began looking for, finding, and interpreting anomalous as-
semblages of rocks in dinosaurs, and especially sauropods.
So starting in the early 20th century, and continuing for quite a while after-
wards, the conventional wisdom about gastroliths has been twofold. First of all,
gastroliths were indeed present in some dinosaurs, but mostly in sauropods, and
