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Question of the Day
Question:
St. Byron Werner, a noted SubGenius from far-flung Los Angeles writes, "Dr. Hal, I have a couple of dinosaur questions for you: Now that they've done away with our beloved 'Brontosaurus' in favor of the 'Apatosaurus,' has the name 'Brontosaurus' been retired, or is it in use for some other 'thunder lizard?' And, what does the prefix 'bronto' translate out to?"Answer:
Oh, good, a dinosaur-related question. Well, Byron, fragmentary fossil material from a sauropod dinosaur was originally given the name apatosaurus by O.C. Marsh. But later, long after a giant sauropod was given the name brontosaurus (also by Marsh), it was discovered that it and apatosaurus were the same animal. When a previously unknown creature is assigned a name, to avoid confusion the scientific rule is that the name given to it first determines its official identification. Therefore, brontosaurus gives way to apatosaurus. Quite a pity, really, because the former name has dramatic resonance. Brontosaurus (bronto, thunder, + saurus, saurian or reptile-- or, if you must, "lizard"-- dinosaurs were not lizards) reverberates in the imagination far more than Apatosaurus ("deceptive lizard"). Of course, since Marsh named both, some people (like Dr. Robert Bakker, for example) think that "Brontosaurus" should stand. Bakker irritates his fellow paleontologists by persisting in using the old name, and by having a scraggly beard and wearing a battered bush hat all the time. Now, one can still refer, loosely, to any large sauropod dinosaur of the diplodocid taxon as a "brontosaur," and everyone will know exactly what you are talking about. It's like the term, "pachyderm," an obsolete category incorrectly linking elephants and hippos as "thick-skinned," e.g. pachydermatous critters. Although "pachyderm" is scientifically invalid, it is still used as a casual synonym for elephant. Thus, so may "Brontosaur" be still used to describe any whopping big diplodocid sauropod (not, however, to describe a brachiosaurid sauropod). Officially, though, yes, the name has been retired. But, Byron, if we no longer have Brontosaurus, we do have Seismosaurus, as in seismo, earthquake + saurus, reptile: "Earthquake (producing) lizard." You see, "Seismo" was far huger than poor old "Bronto." Maybe the biggest land animal that ever lived. Here's a verse about her from Dinosaur Alphabet, my forthcoming book of dinosaur pictures and poems (available from Frog Ltd., Fall 2005):
Though Seismosaurus shook the earth,
With gentle steps, from day to day
She sought the uplands of her birth,
Destroying forests on her way.
Hundred-ton-plus creatures can't afford too many missteps; the earth may have shaken but these giant dinos had to be fairly surefooted. And, as the poem indicates, along their migratory route, herds of these behemoths ate just about every growing thing they passed.
Askdrhal.com by
Jascha Ephraim,
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