New study suggests brontosaurus may actually be a real dinosaur

If you've ever taken a paleontology class, you've heard that the brontosaurus is not a real type of dinosaur, despite its popularity in film. However, a new paper published in the journal PeerJ suggests the brontosaurus may have existed after all.

Charles Marsh, who discovered the brontosaurus in 1879, didn't provide enough distinction between the brontosaurus and the other dinosaur he discovered, the Apatosaurus, The Washington Post explains. The Apatosaurus skeleton he found wasn't complete, and later findings resembled both of Marsh's finds, so the dinosaurs were combined into one genus.

The new study claims that the Apatosaurus excelsus and Apatosaurus ajax have enough differences that they should be separate genera, which would give credence to Marsh's original Brontosaurus proposal.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

"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," Roger Benson of the University of Oxford, co-author of the study, said in a statement.

The study could hold larger implications for scientific classifications, too. The findings could lead to more regulation about how different genera are defined.