Although it has continued to exist in children’s books and some popular science fiction, according to science, the Brontosaurus hasn’t existed since 1903. At that time brontosaurus (“thunder lizard”) was classified as a series of Apatosaurus and the name ceased to be, at least officially. Now a team of researchers from Portugal and the UK think that that have conclusive evidence that the Thunder Lizard deserves to be reinstated as its own genus.
In the 1870s, researchers in the Western United States discovered the fossilized remains of two long necked dinosaurs which were shipped to the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, Connecticut.
After examining the fossils, Yale’s Othniel Charles Marsh described the first set as Apatosaurus ajax (the “deceptive lizard”). Two years later Marsh described the second set of fossils as Brontosaurus excelsus, the “noble thunder lizard”.
The problem was that neither set of remains was found with a skull, so Marsh reconstructed one for the brontosaurus, using the best methods available at the time. He assumed that the animal would have had a box-like skull similar to Camarasaurus, an assumption that later proved to be wrong.
Shortly after Marsh’s death, another skeleton similar to the two found by Marsh was discovered by a team from the Field Museum of Chicago. The new find was seen as an intermediate between the previous finds. It led palaeontologists to conclude that Brontosaurus excelsus was so similar to Apatosaurus ajax that it would be best to classify them ad different species within the same genus. Brontosaurus excelsus became Apatosaurus excelsus and the brontosaurs became extinct for the second time.
Then almost 70 years later, in the 1970s, researchers concluded that Apatosaurus was more closely related to Diplodocus than Camarasaurus. Apatosaurus, including “Brontosaurus” they concluded must have a slender, horse-like skull similar to Diplodocus. This led many to believe that Brontosaurus was simply an Apatosaurus with the wrong head.
Now, a study published in the open access journal PeerJ attempts to revive the twice extinct Brontosaurus.
The team claims 300 pieces of new evidence made possible, in large part, by new technologies and discoveries.
“Our research would not have been possible at this level of detail 15 or more years ago in fact, until very recently, the claim that Brontosaurus was the same as Apatosaurus was completely reasonable, based on the knowledge we had,” said Emanuel Tschopp, a Swiss national who led the study during his PhD at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal in a statement.
Recent discoveries of the fossilized remains of animals similar to Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus have allowed researchers to do a more detailed analysis of the similarities and differences between the extinct animals.
“The differences we found between Brontosaurusand Apatosaurus were at least as numerous as the ones between other closely related genera, and much more than what you normally find between species,” explained Roger Benson, a co-author from the University of Oxford.
Based on their research, the team believes that Brontosaurus can now safely be returned to the world’s textbooks and placed in its own genus.
“It’s the classic example of how science works. Especially when hypotheses are based on fragmentary fossils, it is possible for new finds to overthrow years of research,” said Professor Mateus, a collaborator on the research.
