Rodolfo Coria

Rodolfo Coria ( born 1959 ) is an Argentine paleontologist, known as the excavator of dinosaurs in Patagonia.

Coria was a senior scientist at the Natural History Museum, Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia in Buenos Aires, where he studied with José Bonaparte. He is the founder of the dinosaur museum Museo Municipal Carmen Funes in Plaza Huincul and was its director from 1984 to 2007. Since 2007 he has CONICET in Argentina's National Research Council.

He is one of the excavators of Argentinosaurus ( he and José Bonaparte in 1993 first described ), the largest known land animal, and one of the largest ever found carnivorous dinosaurs, Giganotosaurus (1995, starring Leonardo Salgado (born 1962 ) ). Both are replicas in his museum in Plaza Huincul. He was one of the discoverers of the first sauropod embryos in a nest with hundreds of well-preserved eggs in Auca Mahuevo in Patagonia. 1999 to 2001 he dug with the Canadian paleontologist Philip J. Currie from a group of six specimens of predatory dinosaurs, which they called Mapusaurus 2006. More of his discoveries are a medium-sized predators Quilmesaurus and the herbivorous small Gasparinisaura.

In addition to Patagonia, he has also participated in expeditions to Antarctica and Asia.

Writings

• Basal ornithopods ( with Hans -Dieter Sues, Lawrence Witmer, David Norman ), Dinosauria distribution ( with Paul Barrett and others) in Weishampel, Osmolska, Dodson The Dinosauria, University of California Press, 2nd Edition 2004