Brontosaurus is back: Beloved dinosaur deserves his old name, experts say
Researchers reinstate famous dinosaurby overturning classification from 1903 that deemed it too similar to an Apatosaurus
Palaeontologists are restoring the good name of Brontosaurus more than a century after it was deemed scientifically invalid and the famous dinosaur was reclassified as another genus called Apatosaurus.
They have unveiled an exhaustive analysis of Brontosaurus remains, first unearthed in the 1870s, and those of closely related dinosaurs, determining that the immense, long-necked plant-eater was not an Apatosaurus and deserved its old name back.
Palaeontologist Emanuel Tschopp of Portugal's Universidade Nova de Lisboa cited important anatomical differences including Apatosaurus possessing a wider neck than Brontosaurus and being even more massively built.
"The differences between Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus are numerous enough to revive Brontosaurus as a separate genus from Apatosaurus," he said.
Brontosaurus, which lived in North America around 150 million years ago in the Jurassic Period, was about 22 metres long and weighed about 40 tonnes.
"Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex are the two most popular dinosaur names ever," said Universidade Nova de Lisboa palaeontologist Octávio Mateus.