Apatosaurus louisae

Tadek Kurpaski from London, Poland · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikidata/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- ApatosaurusPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Sauropoda
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Sauropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Sauropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Sauropoda
Time the record covers
At most 12 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 154.8 Mya and 143.1 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
5 occurrences of Apatosaurus louisae on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
5 occurrences- Late Jurassic100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
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The named rock units Apatosaurus louisae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Apatosaurus louisae and its relatives
Late JurassicWhere Apatosaurus louisae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
62 taxa- Allosaurus fragilis3 sites
- Sauropoda3 sites
- Camarasaurus2 sites
- Camarasaurus lentus2 sites
- Dinosauria2 sites
- Diplodocinae2 sites
- Opisthias2 sites
- Stegosaurus2 sites
- Testudines2 sites
- Allosaurus1 site
- Apatosaurinae1 site
- Apatosaurus ajax1 site
- Archosauria1 site
- Athenar bermani1 site
- Barosaurus1 site
- Barosaurus lentus1 site
- Behuninia1 site
- Brachyphyllum1 site
- Camptosaurus aphanoecetes1 site
- Caudata1 site
- Ceratosaurus1 site
- Ceratosaurus nasicornis1 site
- Coniopteris1 site
- Conites1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Apatosaurus louisae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
5 references- Paleontology, taphonomy, and sedimentology of the Mygatt-Moore Quarry, a large dinosaur bonebed in the Morrison Formation, western Colorado—implications for Upper Jurassic dinosaur preservation modes1
- Vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Morrison Formation near Cañon City, Colorado1
- The Duquesne University Collection of Dinosaur Bones1
- A new species of Apatosaurus1
- Principal characters of American Jurassic dinosaurs. Part II1
Each of the 5 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Apatosaurus louisae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Tadek Kurpaski from London, Poland
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Apatosaurus louisae was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itApatosaurus through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Holland 1915)