Brontosaurus is born
In the late 1870’s the Bone Wars were at their height. This was the bitter rivalry between two palaeontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and O.C Marsh. Each of them was determined to find and describe new dinosaurs faster than the other. In 1877 Marsh came across the partial skeleton of a leaf-eating dinosaur he called Apatosaurus or “deceptive lizard”. But it was missing a head, so he borrowed a skull and mounted it as a compete animal. He estimated this animal to be about 50ft long. In 1879, Marsh found the more complete remains of a similar animal, but with a skull. It was also larger at about 70ft long. To get one up on his rival he wrote a paper claiming he’d found another new dinosaur and named it Brontosaurus, “thunder lizard”. The mistake was realised in 1903. It was believed that the Apatosaurus was a younger Brontosaurus and as the Apatosaurus was named first, the name Brontosaurus would be dropped. But the scientific community did not do a lot about it and so Brontosaurus marched in in the popular imagination.
Brontosaurus lives on for the public
Many people fondly remember pyjamas, pillows and blankets with a Brontosaurus image. Fred Flintstone munched his way through Brontosaurus burgers. In 1964-5 an oil company called Sinclair made a life size model for their display at the New York World’s Fair. It was not until the 1970’s when scientists took another look at the case and finally killed the Brontosaurus. Even then the name Brontosaurus continued on, in 1989 the US Postal Service produced a set of stamps which featured the Brontosaurus on the 25c. More recently the Romanian postal service also featured the Brontosaurus on a stamp in 1993.
Brontosaurus is back
Recently, Emanuel Tschopp and colleagues have spent 5 years looking at all the Diplodocidae fossils, the group that includes Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and Barosaurus. After extensive statistical analysis they have concluded that there are significant differences between the original Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus. The Apatosaurus, for example has a thicker neck than the Brontosaurus, and also has a shorter bone in its ankle. They believe that there is a real case to split the current group of Apatosaurs into two and revert to the original names.
Early imagining of Brontosaurus
This is exciting news. It looks like the textbooks are going to have to be rewritten to include Brontosaurus, once again, in the family of dinosaurs.