Brontosaurus
Brontosaurus excelsus
Brontosaurus is a textbook example of how scientific names disappear and return as more fossils and better analyses become available.
Image: Matthew Bellemare · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Brontosaurus excelsus
- Period
- Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian–Tithonian)
- Lived
- 156–146 Ma (156 million years ago)
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Habitat
- Plains
- Length (estimate)
- 22 m
- Mass (estimate)
- 15,000 kg
- Discovered/described
- 1879 · Othniel Charles Marsh
Description
Brontosaurus ('thunder lizard') was a gigantic long-necked plant-eater with a heavy body, pillar-like legs and a whip-like tail. In 1903 the genus was merged with Apatosaurus, so the famous name officially disappeared. A major study in 2015, however, found enough differences to recognise Brontosaurus as a separate genus again.
Habitat
Seasonally dry plains with rivers in western North America.
Fossil sites
Como Bluff, Wyoming
Morrison Formation
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Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Brontosaurus