Brontosaurus or Apatosaurus?

By Craig: When I was a kid I wanted to be a paleontologist. I don't know what happened along the way, but somewhere between the age of 10 and 18 I strayed down a different path never to return. I was five years old when my brother and I received a giant Marx Dinosaur playset. It came in a big cardboard box complete with white, brown and, green dinosaurs. A trio of anachronistic cavemen, with foliage and a three piece cliff set this toy set apart from anything else we received on Christmas day, 1973. If I recall,one of the cavemen was in a standing position lifting a huge boulder over his head, another one was squatting down as if preparing to discover the magic of fire. My memory is blank as to what the third caveman was doing, as if any of this matters. On the tails of the dinosaurs were their names in raised letters which were incomprehensible to a five year old mind. Somehow, however, we learned the names and began pronouncing them with some difficulty. Tyrannosaurus Rex, Trachodon, Hadrosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Iguanadon, and the list goes on. One of our favorite ones was a brown dinosaur with a long neck and a pea sized head, Brontosaurus.

     The history of Brontosaurus is interesting to say the least. In fact, it becomes even more interesting when one finds out that such a creature never even existed. In the late 19th century two prominent American paleontologists; Edward Drinker Cope, and Othniel Charles Marsh engaged in a sometimes contentious rivalry as to their discoveries in the field. Marsh had uncovered a huge sauropod which he named Apatosaurus. He estimated that this creature was about 50 feet long when fully grown. In 1879, a mere two years after his discovery of Apatosaurus, Marsh claimed to have found a much larger species which he promptly named Brontosaurus. For a number of years the two dinosaurs were accepted to be two distinct species. However, in 1903 a few years after Marsh's death, it was found that the Brontosaurus was nothing more than an adult Apatosaurus. In other words, they were the same dinosaur. Due to the way animal species are classified, the first found, Apatosaurus was able to keep it's name, while the name Brontosaurus was relegated to the junk pile. However, for some odd reason this did not happen, Marsh's complete skeleton at the Yale Peabody Museum labeled as a Brontosaurus was so popular, that the name, although disregarded in academic circles, remained popular outside of this inner world. The fraud known as Brontosaurus lasted until recent times. It has  enjoyed quite a history in Hollywood. In the 1933 movie King Kong, it becomes a man eating carnivore. The most recent indignity bestowed upon the Brontosaurus is that Marsh mounted the wrong head on the beast. In the early 1970's it was found that the short squatty head mounted on Marsh's Brontosaurus actually belonged to another dinosaur named Camarasaurus. In other words, the Brontosaurus was a body without a head.

      My brother and I enjoyed our dinosaur play set for many years. Over those years each piece has slowly disappeared into the mists of time. Where they have gone I cannot say. The lime green T-Rex was the first to return to nature when I found the remains of it in my grandfather's garden under a lilac tree. The terrible lizard had been severely mauled by his dog Charlie making it almost unrecognizable. I don't remember what happened to the cavemen, perhaps they somehow found a time porthole in my childhood closet and returned to the Pliocene era from which they belong. I never thought to ask them if they were members of the Australapithecus or Homo Habilis genus of early man, or if they were merely time travelers who had gathered together for a look-see in the year 1973. Yes, they have all disappeared, all of them except for one. The chocolate colored Brontosaurus has withstood the test of time. It has somehow lasted through countless moves across state borders, largely forgotten in some cardboard box along with other treasures from a bygone day. Perhaps it traveled with some of it's companions. I can remember seeing a Trachodon a few years ago in a box in one of my parents many moves. Where it is now I cannot say. I sit here now looking at this piece of plastic that remains of my childhood playset. The tail still shows teeth marks from where my brother and I chewed on it with our baby teeth. It is missing it's right front leg...and remarkably, and quite apropos it lost it's head somewhere along the line...like Marsh's Brontosaurus, Craig & Jay's Brontosaurus has come home to what it really is. A survivor who wants to be remembered, if only for what it wanted to be. As long as I am alive...so lives the Brontosaurus.