Long-necked dinosaurs migrated hundreds of miles, 'stomach stones' reveal
By Laura Geggel - Editor 6 days ago
These stones were carried more than 600 miles in the 'belly of a dinosaur.'
Smooth, pink quartzite "stomach stones" known as gastroliths that researchers found in the Morrison Formation of Wyoming. (Image credit: Josh Malone)
During the Jurassic period, long-necked dinosaurs migrated hundreds of miles across what is now the American Midwest, a new study finds.
How do researchers know that these giant beasts migrated? The dinosaurs gulped down pink stones in what is now Wisconsin, trekked westward more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) and then died in the area that's now Wyoming, leaving the stones in a new location.
"We believe [that these stones] were transported from southern Wisconsin to north-central Wyoming in the belly of a dinosaur," study lead researcher Josh Malone, a graduate student in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, told Live Science.
This new finding is "one of, if not the longest inferred examples of [nonavian] dinosaur migration" on record, added study co-researcher Michael D'Emic, an associate professor in the Department of Biology at Adelphi University in New York.
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