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Brontosaurus is back! | EurekAlert! Science News
In short, the Brontosaurus is back!
Originally posted by EurekaAlert.org
The history of Brontosaurus is complex, and one of the most intriguing stories in science. In the 1870s, the Western United States formed the location for dozens of new finds of fossil species, most notably of dinosaurs. Field crews excavated numerous new skeletons mostly for the famous and influential palaeontologists Marsh and Cope. During that period, Marsh's team discovered two enormous, partial skeletons of long-necked dinosaurs and shipped them to the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, where Marsh worked. Marsh described the first of these skeletons as Apatosaurus ajax, the "deceptive lizard" after the Greek hero Ajax. Two years later, he named the second skeleton Brontosaurus excelsus, the "noble thunder lizard". However, because neither of the skeletons were found with a skull, Marsh reconstructed one for Brontosaurus excelsus. Brontosaurus was a massive animal, like Apatosaurus, and like another long-necked dinosaur from the Western United States, Camarasaurus. Because of this similarity, it seemed logical at the time that Brontosaurus had a similarly stout, box-like skull to that of Camarasaurus. However, this reconstruction was later found to be wrong.
Shortly after Marsh's death, a team from the Field Museum of Chicago found another skeleton similar to both Apatosaurus ajax and Brontosaurus excelsus. In fact, this skeleton was intermediate in shape in many aspects. Therefore, palaeontologists thought that Brontosaurus excelsus was actually so similar to Apatosaurus ajax that it would be more correct to treat them as two different species of the same genus. It was the second extinction of Brontosaurus - a scientific one: from now on, Brontosaurus excelsus became known as Apatosaurus excelsus and the name Brontosaurus was not considered scientifically valid any more.
The final blow to "Brontosaurus" happened in the 1970s, when researchers showed that Apatosaurus was not closely related to Camarasaurus, but to yet another dinosaur from the same area: Diplodocus. Because Diplodocus had a slender, horse-like skull, Apatosaurus and thus also "Brontosaurus" must have had a skull more similar to Diplodocus instead of to Camarasaurus - and so the popular, but untrue myth about "Brontosaurus" being an Apatosaurus with the wrong head was born.
But now, in a new study published in the peer reviewed open access journal PeerJ and consisting of almost 300 pages of evidence, a team of scientists from Portugal and the UK have shown that Brontosaurus was distinct from Apatosaurus after all - the thunder lizard is back!
How can a single study overthrow more than a century of research? "Our research would not have been possible at this level of detail 15 or more years ago", explains Emanuel Tschopp, a Swiss national who led the study during his PhD at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal, "in fact, until very recently, the claim that Brontosaurus was the same as Apatosaurus was completely reasonable, based on the knowledge we had." It is only with numerous new findings of dinosaurs similar to Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus in recent years that it has become possible to undertake a detailed reinvestigation of how different they actually were.
Shortly after Marsh's death, a team from the Field Museum of Chicago found another skeleton similar to both Apatosaurus ajax and Brontosaurus excelsus. In fact, this skeleton was intermediate in shape in many aspects. Therefore, palaeontologists thought that Brontosaurus excelsus was actually so similar to Apatosaurus ajax that it would be more correct to treat them as two different species of the same genus. It was the second extinction of Brontosaurus - a scientific one: from now on, Brontosaurus excelsus became known as Apatosaurus excelsus and the name Brontosaurus was not considered scientifically valid any more.
The final blow to "Brontosaurus" happened in the 1970s, when researchers showed that Apatosaurus was not closely related to Camarasaurus, but to yet another dinosaur from the same area: Diplodocus. Because Diplodocus had a slender, horse-like skull, Apatosaurus and thus also "Brontosaurus" must have had a skull more similar to Diplodocus instead of to Camarasaurus - and so the popular, but untrue myth about "Brontosaurus" being an Apatosaurus with the wrong head was born.
But now, in a new study published in the peer reviewed open access journal PeerJ and consisting of almost 300 pages of evidence, a team of scientists from Portugal and the UK have shown that Brontosaurus was distinct from Apatosaurus after all - the thunder lizard is back!
How can a single study overthrow more than a century of research? "Our research would not have been possible at this level of detail 15 or more years ago", explains Emanuel Tschopp, a Swiss national who led the study during his PhD at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal, "in fact, until very recently, the claim that Brontosaurus was the same as Apatosaurus was completely reasonable, based on the knowledge we had." It is only with numerous new findings of dinosaurs similar to Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus in recent years that it has become possible to undertake a detailed reinvestigation of how different they actually were.
In short, the Brontosaurus is back!
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