Brontopat

Did you know …

That brontosaurus and apatosaurus are the same dinosaur? It’s true! And I bet you already did know that!

Here’s a bonus question and fact: Have you ever condescendingly corrected someone after hearing them use the name brontosaurus, saying that that’s not a real dinosaur, because those stupid early paleontologists put the wrong head on an apatosaurus skeleton and named this foolish chimera “brontosaurus”? And that when modern smart people—like you—came along, the dinosaur was given an appropriate name for its appropriate head? I bet you have!

Well hear this: you are the worst person in the room right now, and probably also the dumbest. I bet you also spout erroneous information about the potency of daddy long legs’ venom.

You are incorrect about the brontosaurus. O.C. Marsh discovered the same dinosaur twice, and Marsh was such a lunging blowhard that he named it twice too, because the second specimen was larger than the first (which was most likely not fully grown when it died.) Apatosaurus beat brontosaurus by two years, so technically that name was more appropriate. “Brontosaurus” just stuck in the public consciousness because that skeleton was larger and more complete, and it was the first mounted sauropod dinosaur. And, yeah, Marsh didn’t put the “right” skull on brontosaurus, but that’s because it didn’t have a skull—he did what paleontologists still do today, and constructed a skull based on the skulls of what he believed were the most closely related species (of those species whose remains included a skull.) In this case, the substitute skull (Marsh used Camarasaurus) turned out to be much more robust than the diplodocid sort of skull that we would eventually discover belonged to brontosaurus-cum-apatosaurus, but it wasn’t a bad guess, given what was available at the time.

So, you know what? You’re a monster. Go get yourself arrested. And tell the police that you’ve been kidnapping and eating children, too, just so they don’t mistake how truly bad you are.