Apatosaurus

Apatosaurus, live reconstruction

• North America (USA: Colorado, Oklahoma Wyoming, Utah)

• Apatosaurus ajax
• Apatosaurus louisae
• Apatosaurus excelus
• Apatosaurus parvus

Apatosaurus ( " deceptive lizard"; junior synonym: Brontosaurus ( " thunder lizard" ) ) is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the family Diplodocidae. It is one of the most famous dinosaurs. Apatosaurus lived in the Upper Jurassic ( Kimmeridgian to Tithonian ), its fossils were in the western United States (Colorado, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Utah) have been found.

Apatosaurus reached a length 21 to 26 meters, its weight is estimated at 30 to 35 tons. He was strongly built, but not as long as the closely related, similarly constructed Diplodocus. But his cock was longer and consisted of 82 vertebrae. Previously, it was discussed whether he used it to ward off enemies, but this seems unlikely since the tail end was not built stable, has no injuries, and the lateral mobility of the tail was limited. However, perhaps he could produce a sonic boom, this could have been used for intraspecific communication. The skull was like that of all diplodocids long and low.

He was like all sauropods an herbivore. Show running parallel, fossilized footprints that he lived at least temporarily in herds.

The American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh discovered the first fossils and named the animal in 1877 Apatosaurus. Two years later he found more remnants and described this as Brontosaurus. 1903 turned out that the two genera are identical. According to the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature ( ICZN ) is the older name in this case, the valid (priority rule), therefore, is the valid name of the genus Apatosaurus. Until 1975, no skull of him was known, so until then was mostly reconstructed with the skull of Camarasaurus. This is stocky and built higher than the skull of Apatosaurus.

Swell

• Upchurch, Barrett Dodson: Sauropoda, Section: Paleobiology, taphonomy, and Paleoecology, in: The Dinosauria (2nd edition ), edited by Weishampel, Dodson and Osmólska. University of California Press, 2004, pp. 273-295, ISBN 0-520-24209-2