It's common knowledge among people with a basic awareness of dinosaurs that Brontosaurus has long been considered what's known as a "junior synonym" of Apatosaurus for quite some time now, but what most people don't realize is that the name Brontosaurus has been sunk for over 100 years at this point! Such is the tenacious grasp that old Bronty has had on popular culture, and for good reason. "Brontosaurus" is one of those rare dinosaur names that just rolls off the tongue, and it's wonderfully evocative, meaning "Thunder Lizard", a truly appropriate name for this ponderous beast. (I'm personally disappointed we got stuck with "sauropod" instead of "brontosaur" as the family name for all long-necks. What the heck kinda name is "Lizard Foot", anyway? Sauropods have elephant feet! But I digress.) As noted on dino-blog Pseudoplocephalus, it's also nice not to have to be the killjoy nerd that's always butting in with "Well aaaactually, it's a sauropod."
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| Brontosaurus, as depicted by the great Charles Knight |
So why, after 100 years, has Brontosaurus come thundering back to center stage? The culprits are Emmanuel Tschopp, Octavio Mateus, and Roger B. J. Benson, authors of a paper which reassesses the entirety of the diplodocid sauropod family. (For those of you who aren't as nerdy as I, diplodocids are the longest members of the long-neck family, but not the tallest or heaviest, titles that go instead to the macronarian sauropods, the group that includes the giraffe-like Brachiosaurus of Jurassic Park fame.) So, okay, a trio of scientists nostalgic for good old Bronty just slapped something together in a vain attempt to overturn 100 years of scientific consensus with Facebook worthy click-bait, right? Well, they're way ahead of you. Knowing their analysis might spark controversy, they examined every single known specimen of every known diplodocid species in the world, and hammered out a truly staggering 300 page paper that actually shakes up several branches of Brontosaurus' family tree.
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| A brief history of the genuses Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus. Image from Tschopp et al. (2015) |
So now Brontosaurus excelsus stands on its own apart from Apatosaurus ajax, but the authors also determine that the species Diplodocus hayi is unique enough from other Diplodocus specimens to stand in its own genus, Galeamopus. Lest you think they're simply splitting species to make a name for themselves, they also sink the Portuguese Dinheirosaurus into the American supergiant Supersaurus. The paper also questions a few more species, but largely leaves them to further review.
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| Authors Tschopp & Mateus measuring a sauropod femur. |
Know what's almost as awesome as a revived Brontosaurus? Open access science! Instead of publishing this momentous paper behind a paywall, the authors published their paper via PeerJ, an open access peer reviewed journal so that anyone in the world (yes, even you) can read their analysis, if so inclined. Any critic of their methods has the whole paper at their fingertips to pick apart (and frankly, no excuse not to respond in equal detail as the authors). In their "press release" interview on the PeerJ blog (which I recommend you read if a 300 page technical document sounds a little daunting to you), the authors specifically name-drop the dino-blog Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week as a key influence in their decision to publish in an open access journal. The guys at SV-POW are some of the most vocal advocates of open access research on the internet right now, so if you have any questions regarding the process and implications of publishing in this manner, they have a hefty back-catalog on the subject for you to peruse.
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| Brontosaurus as envisioned by modern science. Art by Davide Bonadonna. |
What an exciting time to be a dinosaur nerd! To see the revival of such a nostalgic dinosaur name, and to have it backed by such a rock-solid body of research! That's not to say that I don't expect any controversy from this, but that's the great thing about science: whenever you prove a specific scientific theory wrong, science as a whole just gets better!
If you'd like to know more about these developments, I highly recommend reading these articles I'm linking below. I've already linked to them in the body of my post, but just in case you missed them, here they are again. Each of these authors goes far more in-depth far more eloquently than I ever could.
PeerJ blog Interview with the authors:
The Brontosaurus is Back - Author interview
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week:
Welcome back, Brontosaurus! And other first thoughts on Tschopp, et al. (2015)
Pseudoplocephalus
A Brontobyte of Sauropods
And of course, the original 300 page paper if you feel up to it!
(2015) A specimen-level phylogenetic analysis and taxonomic revision of Diplodocidae (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) PeerJ 3:e857
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