For the past century, scientists have dismissed the brontosaurus as not a real dinosaur. Now an international team of paleontologists thinks it’s time to make the beloved beast official once more.
The brontosaurus has always been one of the most beloved dinosaurs, but science has made that love a forbidden one.
You may or may not know this, but for the past 112 years, scientists have considered the Brontosaurus to be not a real thing. This despite the general public's love for the gentle giant.
Brontosaurus was a proposed dinosaur genus that scientists rejected ages ago. A genus is a classification one step higher than species, and can contain numerous species. New data suggest that this has-been genus might be legit after all.
Mattel / Via dinoridersworld.com
Brontosaurus was named by famed paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh in 1879.
He dubbed the fossil remains of a massive, long-necked dinosaur Brontosaurus excelsus. In doing so, Marsh was describing both this new genus (Brontosaurus) and a new species (Brontosaurus excelsus).
But paleontologists of their day believed it was too similar to a dinosaur genus that had already been described.
Marsh's Brontosaurus find was not his first rodeo. He had described many dinosaur fossils before and after this discovery. One such fossil was that of Apatosaurus ajax two years earlier. This dino was superficially similar-looking to Brontosaurus excelsus, but a bit smaller. Marsh found the differences significant enough to merit placing his newest find in its own genus. Unfortunately for Marsh and the Brontosaurus, many others did not.
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