Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Brontosaurus
/ˌbrɒntəˈsɔːrəs/noun
A long-necked sauropod dinosaur of the Late Jurassic.
The Greek roots
βροντή
brontḗ
thunder
σαῦρος
saûros
lizard
Literally: “thunder lizard”
The story of the word
Marsh named it in 1879 for the noise a body that size suggested. In 1903 Elmer Riggs argued the specimen belonged to the earlier-named Apatosaurus, and the rules of zoological naming gave the older name priority, so the better name lost while museums went on using it for most of a century. A 2015 study of sauropod anatomy made the case that Brontosaurus is a separate genus after all, and that argument has not closed.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1879
Same family
brontophobiadinosaurplesiosaurtyrannosaurus
In a sentence
The label under the skeleton was changed twice in thirty years and is now back to Brontosaurus.