OLogy Cards > Apatosaurus excelsus

Putting Their Heads Together
When the first Apatosaurus skeleton was discovered, it was headless. Scientists believed it was related to Camarasaurus, which had been dug up with its head attached. So in Museum displays, a Camarasaurus-like head (bottom) was attached to an Apatosaurus body. Later, paleontologists found a "mystery skull" near an Apatosaurus body. This skull looked more like it belonged to another dinosaur, Diplodocus (top) than to a Camarasaurus. By this time, scientists had figured out that Apatosaurus was more closely related to Diplodocus than Camarasaurus. The Camarasaurus-like heads were removed from the Apatosaurus skeletons in Museums and replaced with casts of the "mystery skull."

Bye-Bye, Brontosaurus!
Scientists used to think that Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were two different types of dinosaur. Once they figured out that the fossils belonged to the same kind of dinosaur, they went with the first name Apatosaurus (from 1877) instead of Brontosaurus (from 1878). The name Brontosaurus is now "extinct," except, of course, in reruns of The Flintstones cartoons.