Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – @ParkstBrett
Remember when you learned about Brontosaurus as a kid? And then some egg-head scientists had to go and start calling it ‘Apatosaurus’? Childhood ruined.
Well, just like TMNT and GI Joe, Brontosaurus is back, baby!
Through an exhaustive taxonomic analysis, an international team of researchers has determined that Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus are in fact two different species.
Paleontologists have considered Brontosaurus as falling under the umbrella of Apatosaurus since 1903. However, the distinctness of Brontosaurus took a real hit in the 1970s, when scientists revealed that Apatosaurus was closely linked to Diplodocus. Because Diplodocus had a slim, horse-like skull, Apatosaurus, and therefore also “Brontosaurus,” must have had a skull comparable to Diplodocus, creating the myth of “Brontosaurus” being an Apatosaurus with the incorrect head.
A classic example of how science works
In the new study, published in the journal PeerJ, a team of European scientists have shown that Brontosaurus was a distinct species after all.
“Our research would not have been possible at this level of detail 15 or more years ago,” explained study author Emanuel Tschopp, a paleontologist at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal. “In fact, until very recently, the claim that Brontosaurus was the same as Apatosaurus was completely reasonable, based on the knowledge we had.”
To reach their conclusion, the team applied statistical methods to calculate the variations among various species and genera of diplodocid dinosaurs.
“We tried to be as objective as possible whenever making a decision which would differentiate between species and genus,” Tschopp said.
“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,” said co-author Roger Benson, a paleontologist from the University of Oxford.
“It’s the classic example of how science works,” said the study’s third author Octávio Mateus, a paleontologist from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal. “Especially when hypotheses are based on fragmentary fossils, it is possible for new finds to overthrow years of research.”
The study not only brings back Brontosaurus as a unique species, it also serves as a reminder that science is always moving forward, even if that means taking a single step back.
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