The Brontesaurus: An A–Z of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë (and Branwell)

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In 1903, Elmer Riggs published a study that described a well-preserved skeleton of a diplodocid from the Grand River Valley near Fruita, Colorado, Field Museum of Natural History specimen P25112. Riggs thought that the deposits were similar in age to those of the Como Bluff in Wyoming from which Marsh had described Brontosaurus. Most of the skeleton was found, and after comparison with both Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus ajax, Riggs realized that the holotype of A. ajax was immature, and thus the features distinguishing the genera were not valid. Since Apatosaurus was the earlier name, Brontosaurus should be considered a junior synonym of Apatosaurus. Because of this, Riggs recombined Brontosaurus excelsus as Apatosaurus excelsus. Based on comparisons with other species proposed to belong to Apatosaurus, Riggs also determined that the Field Columbian Museum specimen was likely most similar to A. excelsus. [17] Family Diplodocidae - whip-tailed, peg-toothed sauropods with high spines on the vertebrae. These included Amargasaurus, Diplodocus, Barosaurus, Seismosaurus, Supersaurus, and others a b D'Emic, Michael D.; Carrano, Matthew T. (June 28, 2019). "Redescription of Brachiosaurid Sauropod Dinosaur Material From the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation, Colorado, USA". The Anatomical Record. 303 (4): 732–758. doi: 10.1002/ar.24198. ISSN 1932-8486. PMID 31254331. S2CID 195765189.

Holtz, Thomas R. Jr. (2011) Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages, Winter 2010 Appendix. a b Taylor, M. P. (2010). "Sauropod dinosaur research: a historical review" (PDF). Geological Society, London, Special Publications. 343 (1): 361–386. Bibcode: 2010GSLSP.343..361T. doi: 10.1144/SP343.22. S2CID 910635. Wedel, M. J. (2005). Postcranial skeletal pneumaticity in sauropods and its implications for mass estimates. The sauropods: evolution and paleobiology. University of California Press, Berkeley, 201-228. Here’s where Brontosaurus stomps in. Tschopp and colleagues had set out to create a revised family tree of diplodocid dinosaurs—huge sauropods found from the western United States to Portugal—with a special emphasis on sorting out how many species of Diplodocus and Apatosaurus there were. The researchers scored 477 anatomical landmarks across 81 individual dinosaurs. While the general shape of the tree supported what other paleontologists had previously proposed, there was a surprise in store: The bones Marsh originally called Brontosaurus seem to stand apart from the two Apatosaurus species, the team reports today in PeerJ.

Large lizard

brontosaurus, (genus Brontosaurus), genus of large herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs living during the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous epochs (163.5 million to 100.5 million years ago). Its fossil was first discovered in western North America in 1874 and first described in 1879 by American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. In 1903, however, the genus Brontosaurus, which means “thunder lizard” in Greek, was subsumed by the earlier-described genus Apatosaurus. Despite the change in classification, the public still embraced the dinosaur as Brontosaurus, owing to the widespread use of its likeness during much of the 20th century in advertising, motion pictures, and television, as well as the presence of Brontosaurus reconstructions in museums throughout North America and Europe. The genus Brontosaurus was reinstated in 2015 after a morphological study of the family to which those genera belonged revealed that the physical differences between Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were enough to separate them into two genera. The genus Brontosaurus contains only one species, B. excelsus. Taxonomic controversy Larimore, Rachael (April 7, 2015). "Dino-Mite! Study Suggests That the Brontosaurus Really Did Exist". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339 . Retrieved June 18, 2015. Topics of The Times: Leapin' Lizards!". The New York Times. October 11, 1989 . Retrieved June 8, 2008.

Based on this, its respiratory system would likely have consisted of parabronchi, with multiple pulmonary air sacs as in avian lungs, and a flow-through lung. An avian respiratory system would need a lung volume of about 0.60m 3 (600L) compared with a mammalian requirement of 2.95m 3 (2,950L), which would exceed the space available. The overall thoracic volume of the same-sized Apatosaurus has been estimated at 1.7m 3 (1,700L), allowing for a 0.50m 3 (500L), four-chambered heart and a 0.90m 3 (900L) lung capacity. That would allow about 0.30m 3 (300L) for the necessary tissue. [72] Evidence for the avian system in Brontosaurus and other sauropods is also present in the pneumaticity of the vertebrae. Though this plays a role in reducing the weight of the animal, Wedel (2003) states they are also likely connected to air sacs, as in birds. [77] Juveniles [ edit ] Reconstructed skeleton of a juvenile B. parvus (type specimen CM 566), Carnegie Museum of Natural History

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Almost all modern paleontologists agreed with Riggs that the two dinosaurs should be classified together in a single genus. According to the rules of the ICZN (which governs the scientific names of animals), the name Apatosaurus, having been published first, has priority as the official name; Brontosaurus was considered a junior synonym and was therefore long discarded from formal use. [43] [44] [45] [46] Despite this, at least one paleontologist– Robert T. Bakker–argued in the 1990s that A. ajax and A. excelsus were in fact sufficiently distinct for the latter to merit a separate genus. [47]

Apatosaurus was a large sauropod dinosaur. It lived around 150 million years ago in the Late Jurassic Period, in an area that is now North America. Let’s discuss some of these possible differences in more detail so that you can make your own informed decision. There are stories of either Cope or Marsh telling their fossil collectors to smash skeletons that were still in the ground, just so the other guy couldn't get them," Lamanna tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered. "It was definitely a bitter, bitter rivalry." Of course, accumulating all the right bones is just the first step in preparing a mount. Today, huge dinosaur skeletons are the stars of many museums. In 1905, though, such an effort had never been attempted before, and the AMNH paleontologists were not entirely sure how the brontosaur bones should be articulated. Matthew, along with colleague Walter Granger, dissected lizards and crocodiles to investigate how their muscles attached to their limb bones, and used these distant modern analogs to give their Brontosaurus a slightly bow-legged posture. Controversy erupted in 1903, however, after a reevaluation of Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus specimens by American paleontologist Elmer Riggs. He concluded that Marsh’s Apatosaurus specimen was simply a younger version of the same type of sauropod represented by his Brontosaurus specimen and that the two genera should thus be consolidated into one. Apatosaurus was first described in 1877, two years before Brontosaurus, and, according to taxonomic naming rules, it therefore became the official genus under which both dinosaurs were classified. Consequently, the species B. excelsus was changed to A. excelsus, joining A. ajax in genus Apatosaurus, and the name Brontosaurus was reduced to a mere synonym.a b c d e f Upchurch, P.; Tomida, Y.; Barrett, P. M. (2005). "A new specimen of Apatosaurus ajax (Sauropoda: Diplodocidae) from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Wyoming, USA". National Science Museum Monographs. 26 (118): 1–156. ISSN 1342-9574. The American Museum of Natural History mount went up in 1905. The dinosaur was promoted as Brontosaurus, not Apatosaurus. Even though Riggs’ case would eventually win out, AMNH paleontologists Henry Fairfield Osborn and William Diller Matthew didn’t agree with the name change. Exactly why Brontosaurus was allowed to live on—much to Riggs’ frustration—is unclear. But all these little quirks of nomenclature and procedure had a major influence on the popularity of Brontosaurus over Apatosaurus. The AMNH mount was the first reconstruction of this dinosaur ever attempted, and in 1905, it was one of a kind. (The original material Marsh used to describe Brontosaurus was held at Yale, but Marsh never made an effort to publicly display the partial skeleton his crew found at Como Bluff, Wyoming. The specimen, carrying a Brontosaurus name plate and the wrong head, was not reconstructed at Yale until 1931.) The AMNH Brontosaurus mount was the introduction of sauropods to the fascinated public.

The name Apatosaurus comes from Greek words meaning 'deceptive lizard'. The scientist who named this dinosaur, Othniel Charles Marsh, felt that some of the fossil bones were confusing to identify. They seemed to resemble the bones of a sea reptile. Are Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus the same dinosaur? Dinos Parade across the Silver Screen". San Diego Natural History Museum. Archived from the original on October 11, 2011. Two years later," Lamanna says, "his fossil collectors that were working out West sent him a second skeleton that he thought belonged to a different dinosaur that he named Brontosaurus." In August 1883, Marshall P. Felch collected a disarticulated partial skull (USNM V 5730) of a sauropod further south in the Felch Quarry at Garden Park, Colorado and sent the specimen to Yale. [11] [12] Marsh referred the skull to B. excelsus, [11] [13] later featuring it in a skeletal reconstruction of the B. excelsus type specimen in 1891 [13] and the illustration was featured again in Marsh's landmark publication, The Dinosaurs of North America, in 1896. [7] At the Yale Peabody Museum, the skeleton of Brontosaurus excelsus was mounted in 1931 with a skull based on the Marsh reconstruction of the Felch Quarry skull. [14] While at the time most museums were using Camarasaurus casts for skulls, the Peabody Museum sculpted a completely different skull based on Marsh's recon. [14] [11] Marsh's skull was inaccurate for several other reasons: it included forward-pointing nasals, something truly different to any other dinosaur, and fenestrae differing from the drawing and other skulls. The mandible was based on a Camarasaurus'. [14] In 1998, the Felch Quarry skull that Marsh included in his 1896 skeletal restoration was suggested to belong to Brachiosaurus instead [11] and this was supported in 2020 with a redescription of the brachiosaurid material found at the Felch Quarry. [12] Second Dinosaur Rush and skull issue [ edit ] Obsolete mount of an apatosaurine referred to B. excelsus (specimen AMNH 460) with sculpted skull, completed in 1905, American Museum of Natural History

The Museum’s “Brontosaurus” took six years to mount and used four different specimens collected from Como Bluff by Granger and other Museum paleontologists. Casts from Marsh’s Apatosaurus were used to fill in the missing bones, and since Granger and his team did not find a head with their specimen, they gave it a sculpted head of another sauropod, Camarasaurus. Figuring out how to support the large skeleton was another challenge, since no specialized materials existed for this purpose. The mount was later revised to be more anatomically accurate, but the original framework—which consists of repurposed pipes and plumbing fixtures—still supports the dinosaur’s torso. Postal Bulletin (PDF) (Report). Washington, DC: United States Postal Service. September 14, 1989. p.7 . Retrieved October 6, 2023. A potential difference between apatosaurus vs brontosaurus is their overall size. Apatosaurus were theoretically larger than brontosaurus, by a great deal. It is estimated that apatosaurus often exceeded 25 tons in weight, while brontosaurus weighed closer to 15 tons. This also indicates that the overall body mass of apatosaurus far outweighed that of the brontosaurus.