Where Has the Brontosaurus Gone?

Many of us learned about the Brontosaurus as children. The Brontosaurus, which means "Thunder Lizard", was a member of the Sauropod family. It lived approximately 150 million years ago and fossils have been found in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. It walked on four legs and had a long neck and long tail, and was the largest land animal that ever existed. In the past 20 years the Brontosaurus name has disappeared from many books and displays.

In the 1860's paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh had a disagreement and started a competition to see who could discover the most species of dinosaurs. Therefore, these two scientists frequently based their findings on incomplete or erroneous data. Marsh wrote about a new species, which he named Apatosaurus, which means "deceptive lizard". This new dinosaur was fifty feet long. Two years later, Marsh claimed to have found another new dinosaur he named Brontosaurus, and claimed it was approximately 70 to 80 feet long. As it turns out, Marsh made a mistake, as the Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus were the same dinosaur. The difference between the two specimens he found was that the Apatosaurus was a juvenile, so the fossil was not as long as the full grown Brontosaurus.

Marsh's mistake was found in 1903, and Apatosaurus became the accepted official name and Brontosaurus became a synonym. The name Brontosaurus continued to be used for quite a long time. Furthermore, it was found that the Brontosaurus also had the wrong head. A skull was not found at the original excavation site and a different head was used to complete the exhibit. The correct head had a longer snout.

Paleontologists today believe that, unlike previous studies, the Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus didn't live in water, but actually disliked swamp areas. This herbivore dinosaur also was able to swing its tale back and forth in defense and ground up its food in its gizzard, which is the lower part of its stomach. The dinosaur would swallow stones to assist in grinding its plant food.

The Brontosaurus has been seen in several movies, including The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933) and the 2005 remake of King Kong.

Sources:

http://www.unmuseum.org/dinobront.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatosaurus