One of the most iconic dinosaurs, Brontosaurus, is back on its own in the dino history books, having regained its status as a unique genus and species.
The reclassification, addressed in a study appearing in the latest issue of the journal PeerJ, appears to resolve a long-standing debate over what to do with Brontosaurus, which looked a lot like the dinosaur Apatosaurus.
That similarity had caused paleontologists to rename Brontosaurus as Apatosaurus excelsus. In short, it was just considered to have been another type of Apatosaurus. Gone was the cool name Brontosaurus, which means "thunder lizard" in Greek.
But now Brontosaurus is back!
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In the new study, previously unearthed remains of dinosaurs similar to Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus made it possible to undertake a detailed re-investigation of how different the various dinos really were.
Study co-author Roger Benson, from the University of Oxford, and his colleagues used statistical approaches to calculate the differences between other species and genera of diplodocid dinosaurs. (This family of plant-eating dinos included some of the longest creatures ever to walk the earth. Diplodocus and Supersaurus, for example, are both thought to have grown to more than 111 feet long.)
"The differences we found between Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were at least as numerous as the ones between other closely related genera, and much more than what you normally find between species," Benson explained in a press release.
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"It’s the classic example of how science works," said study co-author Octávio Mateus. "Especially when hypotheses are based on fragmentary fossils, it is possible for new finds to overthrow years of research."
Brontosaurus has also undergone a minor image makeover as a result of the study. Because of its evolutionary history, the researchers believe the dinosaur probably had a head similar to that of Diplodocus. The image above shows what the "new" Brontosaurus looks like.
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