Brontosaurus

Brontosaurus is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in present-day United States during the Late Jurassic period. It was described by American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh in 1879, the type species being dubbed B. excelsus, based on a partial skeleton lacking a skull found in Como Bluff, Wyoming. In subsequent years, two more species of Brontosaurus were named: B. parvus in 1902 and B. yahnahpin in 1994. Brontosaurus lived about 156 to 146 million years ago (mya) during the Kimmeridgian and Tithonian ages in the Morrison Formation of what is now Utah and Wyoming. For decades, the animal was thought to have been a taxonomic synonym of its close relative Apatosaurus, but a 2015 study by Emmanuel Tschopp and colleagues found it to be distinct. It has seen widespread representation in popular culture, being the archetypal "long-necked" dinosaur in general media.

A picture published with the record for Brontosaurus.

Matthew Bellemare · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikipedia/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
ApatosaurinaePBDB
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.

Late Jurassic — about 23 of 23 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 23 occurrences155–154 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences154–154 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences154–154 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences154–153 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences153–153 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences153–152 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences152–152 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences152–151 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences151–151 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences151–151 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences151–150 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences150–150 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences150–149 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences149–149 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences149–149 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences149–148 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences148–148 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences148–147 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences147–147 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences147–146 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences146–146 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences146–146 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences146–145 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences145–145 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences145–144 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences144–144 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences144–143 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences143–143 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences155.3 Mya142.6 Mya

23 occurrences of Brontosaurus 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

23 occurrences

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

Morrison — 42.02°N, 106.05°WMorrison — 39.13°N, 108.73°WMorrison — 38.54°N, 105.22°WMorrison — 41.89°N, 106.00°WMorrison — 42.15°N, 105.91°WMorrison — 42.15°N, 105.89°WMorrison — 38.71°N, 109.74°WMorrison — 36.90°N, 102.83°WMorrison — 41.73°N, 106.27°WMorrison — 44.84°N, 111.73°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Brontosaurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Brontosaurus and its relatives

Late Jurassic

Where Brontosaurus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

68 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 21 sites for Brontosaurus, 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

15 references

Each of the 23 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. 3 further references are not listed. 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 content2

Picture of Brontosaurus

Credit
Matthew Bellemare
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
Emm
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

This entry was cached before the site began recording what Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource did, so a search that failed cannot be told from one that found nothing.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itApatosaurinae through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Marsh 1879