Let's talk about Apatosaureses. Apatosauri? Apatosaurs? Whatever the plural form may be, today I'm going to tell you about the species of dinosaur known as Apatosaurus. Okay.
Apatosaurus was discovered in 1877 by paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh. In a nutshell, Apatosaurs are a type of plant-eating sauropod, those dinosaurs with the really long necks, from 154 million to 150 million years ago, or during the the Jurassic period. They lived hereish, in the woodlands of North America. They're really, really big, some of the biggest dinosaurs, about 75-85 feet long and 18 tons. It had to keep its head parallel to the ground most of the time because it's neck is too long and heavy and it would be hard to maintain its blood pressure.
I've always felt bad for apatosaurs. They're the saddest dinosaur, in my opinion. Not because they're wimpy or they died out quickly or anything like that, but because there's been so much confusion as to their identity.
Their name, Apatosaur, comes from greek words (like most dinosaur names) "apate/apatelos," which means "deceptive," and "sauro," meaning "lizard." Even from the beginning, apatosaurs (I guess that's what I'm calling them now. Bear with me) were mistaken for a different type of dinosaur-- Mosasaurus, which is an aquatic reptile.
Shortly after Marsh discovered an incomplete set of fossil remains and named them Apatosaurus, he discovered another set of remains, this one more complete, and named it Brontosaurus. Have you heard of them? Good. Now erase them from your mind. You've been lied too. We've all been lied to.
As it turns out, Marsh did not, in fact, discover a new dinosaur. What he discovered were a mostly complete set of apatosaurus bones and one camarasaurus skull. It took until the 1970s to figure this out, which is uncomfortably close to a whole century before the apatosaur was recognized for what it was. They are sad. See?
The reason that this mistake was made is because of something called the Bone Wars (also known as the Great Dinosaur Rush). Much like when everyone was rushing to discover new elements for the periodic table during the mid-late twentieth century (Hi, Ms. O'Donovan!), two of the world's greatest fossil finders, Marsh and another paleontologist named Edward Drinker Cope, were rushing to discover more dinosaurs, first. And also like the periodic table of the elements discovery war, the competitive nature of the scientist often led to rushed decisions, mistaking already found dinosaurs (and/or elements) for new dinosaurs (and/or elements), and, in one case, putting the skull of one dinosaur on the tail instead of on the neck. Yup. That happened to Cope, which sort of makes Marsh's little accident a bit ironic.
So it's sort of understandable why Marsh made the mistake that he did, but not that excusable. Can you imagine if, millions of years in the future, scientist shoved the skull of shark on a human skeleton and called it a completely new sort of being that lived on the earth, terrorixing the humans and keeping them as slaves?
Actually, that would be really cool. But the point still stands.
I feel like we sort of owe apatosaurs an apology, even if they are a species of lizard that has been extinct for millions of years. So, on behalf of the human race, apatosaurs, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.
The reason that I know any of this (besides extensive Wikipedia research) is because of a band/group of storytellers called DinoRock. We had an actual tape thing of a bunch of songs about dinosaurs, one of them being about Alan Apatosaurus and his woeful history. I was going to find a video of this and share it with you, since it is vital to understanding this whole debacle (it's not, really), but unfortunately it can be found nowhere. I did find another one about a particular dinosaur named Harry, a parasaurolophus, though, so all is not lost. Here it is, and remember that this is my childhood.
I hope you enjoyed this small rant about dinosaurs. In the words of dinorock, "dinosaurs, dinosaurs forevermore!"
Some sources I looked at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatosaurus
http://www.livescience.com/25093-apatosaurus.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/was-the-brontosaurus-a-real-dinosaur.htm
http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurdiscovery/a/bonewars.htm
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