Apatosauruswas a sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Late Jurassic Period (about 152 million years ago) in what is now western North America. It was a large animal, being at least 70 feet in length, ad weighted about 20 tons, but some old adults were p
Apatosauruswas a sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Late Jurassic Period (about 152 million years ago) in what is now western North America. It was a large animal, being at least 70 feet in length, ad weighted about 20 tons, but some old adults were probably a lot bigger.
History
The history ofApatosaurusis confusing. The first skeleton, found in the 1870s to be found lacked a skull. Although some bones of its skeleton looked a lot likeDiplodocus, which lived at the same time, other bones looked more like another dinosaur calledCamarosaurus. This made it difficult to figure out exactly where Apatosaurus fit in with other dinosaurs. We now know that the skull ofApatosauruslooked more likeDiplodocusthanCamarosaurus, so we able to putApatosaurusandDiplodocusin the same family. Problem solved. Another confusion surroundingApatosaurusis that we at one time thought thatApatosaurusandBrontosaurus, another dinosaur that lived at the same time, were the same dinosaur that had been accidentally given two names. In 2015, a new study showed that althoughApatosaurusandBrontosaurusare very similar, they are actually two different dinosaurs.
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