For over a century, Brontosaurus has been the “Pluto” of the dinosaur realm – beloved by many, but demoted from its original position in the hierarchy of scientific classification. Now, according to new research conducted by scientists in Portugal and the UK, the Brontosaurus has been reclassified as its own distinct genus.
Fossils of the long-necked Brontosaurus excelsus – whose name means “noble thunder lizard” – were first discovered by paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh in 1879, during the period of the infamous “Bone Wars” of the 19th century, according to the Associated Press. The era refers to the fierce rivalry between Marsh and fellow paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope over the question of who could discover the most dinosaurs.
The scientists’ descriptions of fossils were often rushed because of their competition, and the first Brontosaurus skeletons that Marsh discovered lacked the crucial element of the skull, making it easy for him to misclassify. In 1903, paleontologist Elmer Riggs announced that Brontosaurus was actually part of the Apatosaurus family, and so its genus was renamed. Although the name stuck around in the popular vernacular, the term “Brontosaurus” was not considered to be valid in the scientific community for many years.
The new study, headed by Emanuel Tschopp and co-authored by Robert Benson, found that there are in fact enough differences between the Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus genera to classify them separately. The 300-page study, published in the journal PeerJ, examined 81 different skeletons, making it the most extensive phylogenetic study of sauropods ever completed.
“Thanks to several new and relatively complete finds, we were now finally able to reassess the validity of all the species of Diplodocidae, and study their relationships in more detail than anybody else before,” said Tschopp, a Swiss native who led the study at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. “It’s only normal that such a study also has some unexpected outcomes that overthrow years of research, like the resurrection of Brontosaurus.”
“This detailed data on Diplodocidae allowed us to basically recreate their branch on the tree of life from scratch,” added Benson, of Oxford University. “The differences we found between Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were at least as numerous as the ones between other closely related genera, and much more than what you normally find between species.”
