Over a century after it was scrapped as a distinct genus in favour of Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus has now been confirmed as a separate genus after all.
>Since 1903, experts have been arguing the creature was originally misnamed.
Instead of belonging to the genus, or species ‘family’ Brontosaurus, they said it should in fact have been classified as ‘Apatosaurus’.
Now new research has shown that it is, after all, sufficiently different from Apatosaurus to deserve its own genus name.
Scientists from the UK and Portugal submitted the evidence for resurrecting Brontosaurus in a study almost 300 pages long published in the open access journal PeerJ.
‘The differences we found between Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were at least as numerous as the ones between other closely related genera, and much more than what you normally find between species,’ said Dr Roger Benson, one of the authors from Oxford University.
The researchers used statistical techniques to calculate the differences between species and genera of ‘diplodocid’ dinosaurs – a group that included some of the longest animals that ever walked on the Earth
Full story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3029260/The-thunder-lizard-Beloved-Brontosaurus-finally-recognised-dinosaur-century.html
