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Apr. 11th, 2005
When I was a kid there was, very clearly, a top five of dinosaurs.
They weren't necessarily my favourite dinosaurs. But everyone knew them. They were in every book. They were iconic, the Beatles and the Stones of the dinosaur world.
They were:
1. Tyrannosaurus Rex - ferocious predator, giant teeth, tiny little arms.
2. Triceratops - three horns, head shield that always reminded me of Darth Vader.
3. Stegosaurus - another plant eater, made cool by its rows of dorsal fins
4. Pterodactyl - wings, odd head-fin, the token flying dinosaur
5. Brontosaurus - big. And ate plants. And was pretty boring, really. But was definitely up there in the top five.
Yesterday I went to the supermarket. The girlfriend asked me to get her some macaroni and cheese while I was there.
Which sounds simple enough. Except they don't have just macaroni and cheese. They have Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese, bacon flavoured macaroni and cheese, macaroni and cheese shaped like popular children's characters. In the end, I grabbed the dinosaur-shaped macaroni and cheese, because they all taste the same, and dinosaurs are cool.
On the back of the packet is this scientifically accurate diagram:
Huh?
What the hell is an Apatosaurus? And why the hell is it up there supplanting one of the top five? So I did some research.
Turns out, the brontosaurus no longer exists.
I don't mean it's extinct. It's a dinosaur. They're extinct almost by definition. I mean the brontosaurus no longer exists, and now never did. It's been struck from the scientific record.
Because they were all just a big mistake.
In 1877, some guy named Othniel Charles Marsh published his discovery of the Apatosaurus. Two years later, he followed that up with another discovery - the Brontosaurus.
The brontosaurus was, literally, a bigger discovery. Both fossils were incomplete. But the brontosaurus bones were clearly larger that the apatosaurus, and Marsh rushed a lot of his research because he was in competition with another palaeontologist named Edward Drinker Cope to name the most new species.
In 1883, after more bones had been unearthed, Marsh presented a full reconstruction of the brontosaurus. Which, ironically, did the poor bronto in. Because in 1903, another palaeontologist named Elmer Riggs showed that the apatosaurus was actually just a juvenile form of the brontosaurus.
Because the apatosaurus had been named first, that became the official name. "Brontosaurus" was relegated to just a synonym. Then in 1974, it was finally struck from the scientific registry altogether. And the only place the name lingered on was in children’s books about these giant vanished lizards.
There. Don’t say I never teach you anything.
(Information mostly cribbed from Wikipedia’s Apatosaurus entry, and this page about Marsh.)
They weren't necessarily my favourite dinosaurs. But everyone knew them. They were in every book. They were iconic, the Beatles and the Stones of the dinosaur world.
They were:
1. Tyrannosaurus Rex - ferocious predator, giant teeth, tiny little arms.
2. Triceratops - three horns, head shield that always reminded me of Darth Vader.
3. Stegosaurus - another plant eater, made cool by its rows of dorsal fins
4. Pterodactyl - wings, odd head-fin, the token flying dinosaur
5. Brontosaurus - big. And ate plants. And was pretty boring, really. But was definitely up there in the top five.
Yesterday I went to the supermarket. The girlfriend asked me to get her some macaroni and cheese while I was there.
Which sounds simple enough. Except they don't have just macaroni and cheese. They have Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese, bacon flavoured macaroni and cheese, macaroni and cheese shaped like popular children's characters. In the end, I grabbed the dinosaur-shaped macaroni and cheese, because they all taste the same, and dinosaurs are cool.
On the back of the packet is this scientifically accurate diagram:
Huh?
What the hell is an Apatosaurus? And why the hell is it up there supplanting one of the top five? So I did some research.
Turns out, the brontosaurus no longer exists.
I don't mean it's extinct. It's a dinosaur. They're extinct almost by definition. I mean the brontosaurus no longer exists, and now never did. It's been struck from the scientific record.
Because they were all just a big mistake.
In 1877, some guy named Othniel Charles Marsh published his discovery of the Apatosaurus. Two years later, he followed that up with another discovery - the Brontosaurus.
The brontosaurus was, literally, a bigger discovery. Both fossils were incomplete. But the brontosaurus bones were clearly larger that the apatosaurus, and Marsh rushed a lot of his research because he was in competition with another palaeontologist named Edward Drinker Cope to name the most new species.
In 1883, after more bones had been unearthed, Marsh presented a full reconstruction of the brontosaurus. Which, ironically, did the poor bronto in. Because in 1903, another palaeontologist named Elmer Riggs showed that the apatosaurus was actually just a juvenile form of the brontosaurus.
Because the apatosaurus had been named first, that became the official name. "Brontosaurus" was relegated to just a synonym. Then in 1974, it was finally struck from the scientific registry altogether. And the only place the name lingered on was in children’s books about these giant vanished lizards.
There. Don’t say I never teach you anything.
(Information mostly cribbed from Wikipedia’s Apatosaurus entry, and this page about Marsh.)