Super!
I can now play one of my old Move singles without feeling guilty!
The brontosaurus, loved by kids the world over but cruelly snubbed by paleontologists for more than a century, is back. British and Portuguese fossil boffins have concluded the dinosaur existed as a separate genus after all. It was back in 1879 that paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh named a collection of bones a …
Of all the pictures you could have dredged up to illustrate that story, did you have to find an aquatic brontosaurus one? Sauropods were most emphatically NOT aquatic in any sense of the word; they would have done their best to avoid water, since they were strongly adapted towards walking on land.
The ones in the picture are wearing inflatable water-wings - unfortunately not quite visible, just below the surface.
There's simply nothing in nature to rival the aural symphony that is a herd of majestic Brontosauri thundering towards a pool, roaring and bellowing, with their water-wings squeaking and hissing with over-inflation.
Who wrote an essay arguing that giving Apatasaurus the nod for nomenclature priority was shortsighted. He also used it to name the book in which the essay was collected. And the book jacket even used the same illustration our esteemed editors chose, so there!
Too bad he didn't live to see his vindication.
Brontosaurus
Huge beast. Ate only plants, but could crush a '93 Cabriolet with a single step of its titanic brontosaurus feet. Name means "Thunder Lizard" which is about as cool as you can get. Its only real drawback is that it didn't really exist. B+
Apatosaurus
This is what they're calling brontosauruses these days. Apparently they had some problem with the wrong skull on the wrong body--duh--and once they figured it out they had to change the name to "apatosaurus," which means "Deceptive Lizard." Personally I think they should have looked up the Latin for "Stupid Scientist." D
So, to recap how science works:
Wonk finds something cool, not quite like what already exists and names it.
Jealous wonks decide they don't like it and arbitrarily scuttle the whole thing.
New wonks finally push the jealous wonks out and fix the record.
Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile textbook manufacturers laugh all the way to the bank and at least one generation of humanity is confirmed to have been given a shoddy education.
Tell you what, how about we stop teaching our kids anything that can. Be independtly verified in a classroom setting and leave all the conjecture for Sunday mornings.