There was no such thing as a Brontosaurus.
(6:42:31 PM) Cash Money: Did you see the video going around of Al Franken taking apart that woman from the Hudson Institute?
(6:45:19 PM) KahrlZero: This the thing about the senate health care subcommittee?
(6:45:25 PM) Cash Money: Yeah.
(6:45:19 PM) KahrlZero: Yeah, saw it.
(6:45:25 PM) Cash Money: Nice.
(6:45:32 PM) KahrlZero: This is an ugly business, my friend.
(6:46:38 PM) Cash Money: It is.
(6:46:57 PM) KahrlZero: I’m fairly certain that I’m going to get screwed.
(6:47:09 PM) Cash Money: As I told Alex (kid watched it with me), “these are sad times when only the comedians are making sense and acting rational. This speaks ill of our country as adults.”
(6:58:37 PM) Cash Money: But apparently when I write stuff like that for BoL, Nekogirl gets depressed.
(6:59:09 PM) KahrlZero: I do, too. I wouldn’t censor you for it, but it sucks the hope right outta me.
(6:59:52 PM) Cash Money: Well,
(7:00:04 PM) Cash Money: we as a generation are very wussy about this sort of thing.
(7:00:19 PM) Cash Money: “Oh shit? It’s not all hugs and rainbows? Run for the hills!”
(7:00:42 PM) Cash Money: We have been told that being sad or angry is Wrong®.
(7:01:01 PM) Cash Money: And that there is something Wrong® with us if stimuli makes us feel these things.
(7:01:01 PM) KahrlZero: It does make everything that every supportive, nurturing adult told us in the 80s an out-and-out lie.
(7:01:11 PM) Cash Money: Heh.
(7:01:14 PM) Cash Money: The 80′s WERE a lie.
(7:01:22 PM) Cash Money: There is no such thing as a Brontosaurus.
When we were wee, the Big Three for dinosaurs were: badass biped T-Rex, three-horned Triceratops, and long-tall Brontosaurus. On occasion, they’d be flanked by perpetual also-rans, Stegosaurus and Pteranodon.
But imagine my surprise when I found out that Brontosaurus wasn’t a Brontosaurus at all but actually a miserable Apatosaurus.
This misunderstanding all dates back to The Bone Wars of the late 1800′s. Wiki me:
The Bone Wars, also known as the “Great Dinosaur Rush”, refers to a period of intense fossil speculation and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope (of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia) and Othniel Charles Marsh (of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale). Each of the two paleontologists used underhanded methods to try to out-compete the other in the field, resorting to bribery, theft, and destruction of bones. Each scientist also attacked the other in scientific publications, seeking to ruin his credibility and have his funding cut off.
Bone Wars! Yeah, baby! Suffice to say, The Bone Wars were science at its best/worst/best, again. More on that another time, I promise but for now we need to focus on the fact that all wars have a casualties and the chief casualty of this war was the Brontosaurus.
In his dynamite-fueled zeal to outdo his rival, Marsh published a two-paragraph article in 1877 announcing the finding of a of creature 50 foot in length and only included a description of a spinal column but went on to name the animal Apatosaurus (Apatosaurus ajax meaning “Deceptive Lizard“). The world rejoices. The world is also somewhat confused about how a 50 foot animal could be considered “deceptive.”
Two years later, Marsh claimed to have found another new dinosaur, describing only a pelvis and vertebrae of a creature he reckoned was 70 or 80 feet long. This one he named Brontosaurs (Brontosaurus excelsus meaning “Thunder Lizard”). The world rejoices. This one is much more sensibly named.
Marsh went on to mount (tee-hee!) a nearly complete skeleton of Brontosaurs at Yale’s Peabody Museum where it became a hit attraction spawning even more of a national dinosaur craze.
Never mind the fact that the original skeleton was a hodge-podge of bones from other critters including THE WRONG SKULL (the original actually being that of Camarasaurus, something that was not corrected until the 1970′s!) it was the first sauropod (long neck, long tail family) dinosaur on display anywhere in the world. Halcyon days, indeed!
Cut to 1903. Elmer Riggs of the Field Museum in Chicago shakes Brontosaurs vigorously by the arms demanding to know the truth about Apatosaurus.
“She’s my sister!”
[slap]
“My daughter!”
[slap!]
“She’s my sister and my daughter! Wait… no… just my daughter!”
The grim truth comes out! Apatosaurus was just a juvenile Brontosaurus! Or more to the point, because Apatosaurus was discovered first, Brontosaurus was actually an adult Apatosaurus!
Riggs promptly published his findings and announced that “brontosaurus” (lowercased “b”) would forever only be used colloquially to describe Apatosaurus.
Oh, the shame! The infamy!
The… wait… That was 1903?
Turns out out Riggs published to a far less-known scientific rag than Marsh and the information remained locked away in the most anal of scientific circles. As such, for the better part of a century, Brontosaurus was featured in museums, schools, television, and used in advertising and logos.
The name was not even strictly removed from the records of paleontology until 1974. By then, the damage was done and we all knew that if it had a long neck and impressive tail it was either Audrey Hepburn or a Brontosaurus.
This lax correction period came to a head in 1989 when the U.S. Postal Service issued a set of stamps featuring Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, Pteranodon (misspelled “Pteradon” and, fun fact: NOT A DINOSAUR! Actually a flying reptile. Whoops.) and Brontosaurus. Cue the shitstorm. Formal complaints were lodged claiming that the U.S. Postal Service was “fostering scientific illiteracy.” The Postal Service claimed they used the name because it was better known.
Since then, most sources have changed all references to Brontosaurus to Apatosaurus. Mind you, nobody told me until I was old enough to drink. I’m really noticing that mine is one of the last generations to really go hog wild on dinosaurs in general. I guess once Pokemon and Hanna Montana showed up, kids have had better things to waste their time on but as a youth I remember not being able to swing a dead cat over my head without hitting some kind of dinosaur merchandise.
Things are grim all over but don’t worry: Mr. Franken will protect you and I’ve personally taken it upon myself to rekindle the youth population’s interest in dinosaurs the way I do everything: insidiously.
Two of my friends’ kids have already received dinosaur toys for birthdays. Ho ho ho, we may have lost the Brontosaurus, but we haven’t lost the war, my friends. No sir.
And now: ANESTHETIZE!
-end-
It’s not fair!! Germany get free health care and Dinosaurs.