Brontosaurus
This morning as I was making breakfast for my wee munchkin, he was happily watching Peppa Pig on TV. He loves the show, and I must admit I quite like it too...
What jumped out at me this morning, however, was when they put the toy Brontosaurus back on the shelf.
Hang on - Brontosaurus??? I think not.
As some of you may be aware, there never was a Brontosaurus.
What the - ??? I know, right? I also grew up with the two top dog dinosaurs being T-Rex and Brontosaurus. Only it turns out that whilst T-Rex is (was) still a go, there never was a Brontosaurus dinosaur.
What there was, was Apatosaurus. The issue stemmed from the ‘bone wars’ about 130 years ago. Two paleontologists, Marsh and Cope, were in fierce competition with each other. Marsh found a partial skeleton of a dinosaur that had a long neck and long tail, and was a plant eater. He named it Apatosaurus (“deceptive lizard”). The skull of the dinosaur was missing so he quickly stuck the skull of another dinosaur (Camarasaurus) on it and exhibited his new find to show up Cope.
Then two years later a few of Marsh’s underlings found the skeleton of another dinosaur that, whilst similar to Apatosaurus, had differences in the bones of the spine. This skeleton was more complete than the Apatosaurus found earlier. Marsh named this new dinosaur Brontosaurus (“thunder lizard”).
They were, of course, the same dinosaur - Apatosaurus. We now know that the backbones of Apatosaurus grew together as the dinosaur got bigger. That’s what made the bones look different in the second skeleton found, leading it to be named as a different dinosaur.
So all this time, Brontosaurus was actually Apatosaurus.
But there’s more. Scientists actually worked this out in in 1903!!! It seems the public just didn’t want to let go of Brontosaurus...
So there you go. Your munchkins won’t be growing up in a world where Brontosaurus once grazed the land. But don’t worry - there were lots of other sauropods for the other dinosaurs to play with (eat?). Like Brachiosaurus. He was much bigger than Apatosaurus anyway...
Go dinosaurs!