Can they ever make up their minds? First they expunge our favorite dinosaur from the science books:
But then, in 1903, Elmer Riggs said that classification was wrong. He based his premise on the number of sacrum bones (where the tail attaches to the spinal cord) of each dinosaur, according to Wired magazine. The Apatosaurus sacrum has three bones, while the Brontosaurus had five. Instead of being a different species, Riggs contended the Brontosaurus was a younger version of the Apatosaurus.
… and now they’re dragging the poor guy back from the grave …
Both were long-necked and long-tailed creatures, among the largest to roam the Earth in their time. But now an extensive study published online in the journal PeerJ, finds that there are considerable differences between the two — enough, the researchers say, to conclude that they belong to separate groups.
A team of paleontologists spent five years researching and analyzing hundreds of different physical features of dinosaur specimens. The study’s lead author, Emanuel Tschopp from the New University of Lisbon in Portugal, says, “Generally, the Brontosaurus can be distinguished from Apatosaurus most easily by its neck, which is higher and less wide,” according to Scientific American.
Tschopp tells the magazine that while both dinosaurs are massive and robust animals, Apatosaurus is “even more extreme than Brontosaurus.”
Yes! All of us middle-aged dinosaur junkies with our affection for “thunder lizard” may soon rejoice — Brontosaurus may be back!
A whimsical search of the Internet for Surveys for favorite dinosaur yielded tantalizing hints, but results were as hard to come by as some dinosaur species.
The Dinosaur society is here.
