Facts about Brontosaurus Dinosaur

If watching the movie Jurassic Park made you think that dinosaurs used to attack anyone in their vicinity, Brontosaurus is a testament to the fact that there were also herbivorous dinosaurs millions of years ago. Brontosaurus comes from the family of Diplodocidae, a clade of sauropod dinosaurs.

History of Brontosaurus
In the year 1877, a professor of Paleontology from Yale University, Othniel Marsh, named an incomplete skeleton of a dinosaur as the Apatosaurus Ajax. Two years later, in 1879, he discovered another specimen of dinosaur at Como Bluff Wyoming. Due to discrepancies of size, it was wrongly identified by Marsh as belonging to a totally new genus and species. He named that species Brontosarus Excelsus - which means thunder lizard, Greek 'bronte' meaning thunder and 'saurus' meaning lizard. 'Excelsus' referred to the number of sacral vertebrae, which was more than in any other genus of sauropod that time. Many experts thought that the latter specimen did not qualify to be a separate genus because it bore a striking resemblance to that of the Apatosaurus Ajax found in 1877. There were many arguments as to whether Apaptosaurus and Brontosaurus are two different species or variations of a single genera. Some opined that there is hardly any difference between them. So Brontosaurus is considered as a synonym of Apaptosaurus.

The specimen that was found was of the largest dinosaur ever discovered till then. It was nearly complete, but the head, portions of tail and feet were missing. The dinosaur specimen was displayed at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History in 1905. Interestingly, the missing bones were filled by using known pieces from close relatives of Brontosaurus. The fossils of this animal have been mainly found in the USA, Mile Quarry and Bone Cabin Quarry in Wyoming and at sites in Colorado, Oklahoma and Utah.

Physical Traits
This dinosaur was a huge quadrupedal with a tremendously long neck. With a long, whip-like tail, its hind limbs were shorter than its forelimbs. One of the measurements says that these creatures were 85 meters long and used to weigh around 24-32 tons, which is approximately the weight of four elephants put together. Similar to most of the Sauropods, Brontosaurus had a single large claw on each of its forelimb. The first three toes on the hind limb also possessed claws. If compared with the size of the body, Brontosaurus had a small skull and brain which is a testament to it being one of the least intelligent dinosaurs.

Its teeth resembled chisels, which was appropriate for herbivorous diet. There was a theory that these creatures must have lived partly in water. Compared to Diplodocus, these animals had elongated and heavily constructed cervical vertebrae. Stockier leg bones, implied that it was a huge animal.

Diet
The mammoth dinosaur moved in herds and is believed to scare off the predators owing to its huge size. Brontosaurus was a herbivore, ate only plants, tree leaves and ferns. According to a few paleontologists, they might have had thick, moose-like lips which helped them gather plant material. The sauropod is believed to swallow leaves and other vegetation as a whole, without chewing them. It probably had gastroliths, that is, stomach stones to help it digest the plant material.

These were some of the conclusions drawn from the fossils of the Brontosaurus. It cannot be denied that it was the largest animal to have inhabited the earth.