He is known for having participated in the description of notable sauropsids such as the ichthyosaur Besanosaurus and the theropod dinosaurs Scipionyx and Saltriovenator.

He was born in Monza, Italy and has been working since 1991 for the Milan Natural History Museum where he 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.

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.

[2] In 2018, Dal Sasso, Simone Maganuco and Andrea Cau described Saltriovenator, considered as the earliest known Ceratosauria and largest Early Jurassic theropod, discovered in 1996 in a quarry in Saltrio, in northern Italy.