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80-486: Beginning with Red's Dream and its references to previous Pixar short films, Pixar has included references in its films to other works produced by the studio. These have included cameo appearances , references to characters, objects, and titles of works. Additionally, such easter eggs or in-jokes can refer to Pixar staff, associates, or places or events from the company's past. Lastly, some things, such as A113 , Pizza Planet, or actor John Ratzenberger have appeared in

160-571: A Brontosaurus in Toy Story and a Tyrannosaurus in Cars (a reference to Sinclair Oil , which uses a similar dinosaur logo. The name, however, is similar to Sunoco , the current oil and gasoline sponsor of NASCAR). Eggman Movers is a fictional moving company that has an anthropomorphic egg with a hat as a mascot and appears mostly throughout the Toy Story franchise. The company's name

240-464: A bifurcate top. The neural spines of the dorsals would increase in height further towards the tail, creating an arched back. Apatosaurine neural spines compose more than half the height of the vertebrae. Medial surfaces of neural spines are gently rounded in B. yahnahpin , whereas in other B. spp. they are not. The dorsal ribs are not fused or tightly attached to their vertebrae, instead being loosely articulated. Ten dorsal ribs are on either side of

320-464: A classroom at CalArts , the alma mater of former Pixar/Disney executive John Lasseter and director Brad Bird , among others. Bird was the first to use the A113 Easter egg, on a car license plate in an animated segment entitled Family Dog in a 1987 episode of the television series Amazing Stories . Described as "Pixar's good luck charm" by John Lasseter, actor John Ratzenberger played

400-645: A hallway during production, where Lasseter sometimes slept for days on end. The short film debuted at the annual SIGGRAPH conference in Anaheim on July 10, 1987, and received general enthusiasm from its attendants. Red's Dream was never attached to any later Pixar feature, unlike many other early Pixar short films. The short was later released in theaters with Home on the Range in 2004. It also saw release for home video as part of Tiny Toy Stories in 1996 and Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 1 in 2007. On

480-425: A hallway. Towards the end of production, Lasseter worked and slept in the hallways for days on end. One night, about two weeks before the deadline for SIGGRAPH, an engineer named Jeff Mock brought his camcorder around and shot an ersatz interview with Lasseter, who joked about the conditions. He had just spent five days animating a sequence of three hundred frames-twelve and a half seconds of film. Shortly following

560-488: A heavily built shoulder girdle and pelvis . Several size estimates have been made, with the largest species B. excelsus reaching up to 21–22 m (69–72 ft) from head to tail and weighing in at 15–17 t (17–19 short tons), whereas the smaller B. parvus only got up to 19 m (62 ft) long. Juvenile specimens of Brontosaurus are known, with younger individuals growing rapidly to adult size in as little as 15 years. Brontosaurus has been classified within

640-421: A long, whip-like tail, and forelimbs that were slightly shorter than its hindlimbs. The largest species, B. excelsus , measured up to 21–22 m (69–72 ft) long from head to tail and weighed up to 15–17 t (17–19 short tons); other species were smaller, measuring 19 m (62 ft) long and weighing 14 t (15 short tons). The skull of Brontosaurus has not been found but was probably similar to

720-543: A museum, that of the Carnegie. In 1995, the American Museum of Natural History followed suit, and unveiled their remounted skeleton (now labelled Apatosaurus excelsus ) with a corrected tail and a new skull cast from A. louisae . In 1998, Robert T. Bakker referred a skull and mandible of an apatosaurine from Como Bluff to Brontosaurus excelsus ( TATE 099-01) , though the skull is still undescribed. In 2011,

800-545: A nearly complete postcranial skeleton of an apatosaurine was collected in Utah by crews working for Brigham Young University (BYU 1252-18531) where some of the remains are currently on display. The skeleton is undescribed, but many of the features of the skeleton are shared with A. parvus . The species was placed in Brontosaurus Tschopp et al. in 2015 during their comprehensive study of Diplodocidae . In

880-458: A rainy night in an unnamed, deserted city where no one can be seen, a red unicycle named Red is lying in the clearance corner of a bicycle shop called "Eben's Bikes". Red dreams of being the center of a circus act, which is represented within a dream sequence in which it is ridden by a circus clown named Lumpy. After cycling onstage to little fanfare, Lumpy begins a juggling act with three colored balls, which he continually drops by accident, prompting

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960-483: A redescription of the brachiosaurid material found at the Felch Quarry. During a Carnegie Museum expedition to Wyoming in 1901, William Harlow Reed collected another Brontosaurus skeleton, a partial postcranial skeleton of a young juvenile (CM 566), including partial limbs. However, this individual was found intermingled with a fairly complete skeleton of an adult (UW 15556). The adult skeleton specifically

1040-518: A role in every Pixar feature from Toy Story to Onward , including a few not produced by Pixar. Soul is the first film where John Ratzenberger uses his likeness instead of a voice role, while he is not present at all in Luca , Turning Red , Lightyear , or Elemental . A yellow ball with a blue stripe and a red star, which was first shown in the short Luxo, Jr. , has been shown in several Pixar feature films and shorts, most prominently in

1120-530: A synonym". Nonetheless, before the mounting of the American Museum of Natural History specimen, Henry Fairfield Osborn chose to label the skeleton " Brontosaurus ", though he was a strong opponent of Marsh and his taxa. In 1905, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) unveiled the first-ever mounted skeleton of a sauropod, a composite specimen (mainly made of bones from AMNH 460) that they referred to as Brontosaurus excelsus . The AMNH specimen

1200-502: Is a fictional megacorporation that first appeared in WALL-E as the entity which controlled all economic and government services on the future Earth. Dinoco is a fictional oil company that first appeared in Toy Story as a small gas station. It plays a central role as a key race car sponsor in Cars , and made a small cameo in WALL-E . The company's logo is a dinosaur, but with

1280-412: Is a reference to Pixar production designer Ralph Eggleston . Poultry Palace is a fictional chicken-based fast-food chain that first appears in the Toy Story short Small Fry . These Pixar films contain the following references to the Toy Story films, shorts, and television specials: These Pixar films and shorts contain the following references to A Bug's Life : These Pixar films contain

1360-454: Is longer and slenderer than the tibia. The foot of Brontosaurus has three claws on the innermost digits; the digit formula is 3-4-5-3-2. The first metatarsal is the stoutest, a feature shared among diplodocids. B. excelsus' astragalus differs from other species in that it lacks a laterally directed ventral shelf. Brontosaurus is a member of the family Diplodocidae, a clade of gigantic sauropod dinosaurs . The family includes some of

1440-421: Is more strongly character driven than Luxo Jr. , Pixar's previous short film. The short was designed to demonstrate new technical innovations in imagery. The short was created by employing the company's own Pixar Image Computer, but the computer's memory limitations led the animation group to abandon it for further projects. Space was growing tight at the company, and as a result, Lasseter and his team worked out of

1520-530: Is no Pizza Planet truck anywhere in The Incredibles . Director Brad Bird said that he was too busy making the film to tell the animation team to insert the truck. To avoid overt product placement in Pixar films, a series of fictional companies are used as placeholders. Some appear only in one franchise (such as fictional NASCAR sponsors in Cars ) but others serve as recurring themes. Buy-n-Large

1600-477: Is the presence of a depression on the posterior face of the scapula, which the latter lacks. The scapula of Brontosaurus also has a rounded extension off of its edge, a characteristic unique to Brontosaurus among Apatosaurinae. The coracoid anatomy is closely akin to that of Apatosaurus , with a quadratic outline in dorsal view. Sterna have been preserved in some specimens of Brontosaurus, which display an oval outline. The hip bones include robust ilia and

1680-406: Is well known, with fossils demonstrating that it was large, long-necked, and quadrupedal with a long tail terminating in a whip-like structure. The cervical vertebrae are notably extremely robust and heavily-built, in contrast to its lightly built relatives Diplodocus and Barosaurus . The forelimbs were short and stout whereas the hindlimbs were elongated and thick, supported respectively by

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1760-402: The Toy Story franchise , as well as the print Pixar icon. Pizza Planet is a fictional pizza restaurant that appears in Toy Story . In the film, it is a large, sci-fi -themed restaurant with arcade games including robot guards at the entrance. The company runs a fleet of derelict Toyota Hilux pickup trucks (as evidenced by the inscription on the tailgate; it is a Toyota inscription with

1840-571: The Kimmeridgian and Tithonian ages in the Morrison Formation of what is now Utah and Wyoming. For decades, the animal was thought to have been a taxonomic synonym of its close relative Apatosaurus , but a 2015 study by Emmanuel Tschopp and colleagues found it to be distinct. It has seen widespread representation in popular culture, being the archetypal "long-necked" dinosaur in general media. The anatomy of Brontosaurus

1920-542: The Late Jurassic period. It was described by American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh in 1879, the type species being dubbed B. excelsus , based on a partial skeleton lacking a skull found in Como Bluff , Wyoming . In subsequent years, two more species of Brontosaurus were named: B. parvus in 1902 and B. yahnahpin in 1994. Brontosaurus lived about 156 to 146 million years ago (mya) during

2000-576: The Paleontological Society of America , yet he left the Carnegie Museum mount headless. While some thought Holland was attempting to avoid conflict with Osborn, others suspected that Holland was waiting until an articulated skull and neck were found to confirm the association of the skull and skeleton. After Holland's death in 1934, a cast of a Camarasaurus skull was placed on the mount by museum staff. No apatosaurine skull

2080-607: The Tate Geological Museum , also from the Morrison Formation of central Wyoming. The specimen consisted of a partial postcranial skeleton, including a complete manus and multiple vertebrae, and was described by James Filla and Pat Redman a year later. Filla and Redman named the specimen Apatosaurus yahnahpin ("yahnahpin-wearing deceptive lizard"), but Robert T. Bakker gave it the genus name Eobrontosaurus in 1998. Bakker believed that Eobrontosaurus

2160-448: The radius and ulna could cross, when in life they would have remained parallel. Brontosaurus had a single large claw on each forelimb which faced towards the body, whereas the rest of the phalanges lacked unguals . Even by 1936, it was recognized that no sauropod had more than one hand claw preserved, and this one claw is now accepted as the maximum number throughout the entire group. The metacarpals are elongated and thinner than

2240-491: The 1903 edition of Geological Series of the Field Columbian Museum, Elmer Riggs argued that Brontosaurus was not different enough from Apatosaurus to warrant a separate genus, so he created the new combination Apatosaurus excelsus for it. Riggs stated that "In view of these facts the two genera may be regarded as synonymous. As the term ' Apatosaurus ' has priority, ' Brontosaurus ' will be regarded as

2320-527: The Birds : These Pixar films contain the following references to Geri's Game : These Pixar films contain the following references to Boundin' : These Pixar films contain the following references to Apple Inc. These Pixar films contain cameo appearances by Pixar employees. These Pixar films contain references to Pixar employees. These Pixar films contain the following references to an assortment of other things. Red%27s Dream Red's Dream

2400-628: The Diplodocidae after Tschopp, Mateus , and Benson (2015): Amphicoelias altus Unnamed species Apatosaurus ajax Apatosaurus louisae Brontosaurus excelsus Brontosaurus yahnahpin Brontosaurus parvus Unnamed species Tornieria africana Supersaurus lourinhanensis Supersaurus vivianae Leinkupal laticauda Galeamopus hayi Diplodocus carnegii Diplodocus hallorum Kaatedocus siberi Barosaurus lentus The cladogram below

2480-466: The Morrison Formation had become the center of the Bone Wars , a fossil-collecting rivalry between Marsh and another early paleontologist, Edward Drinker Cope . Because of this, the publications and descriptions of taxa by Marsh and Cope were rushed at the time. Brontosaurus excelsus ' type specimen ( YPM 1980) was one of the most complete sauropod skeletons known at the time, preserving many of

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2560-592: The PIC's incapability of performing any motion blur , Lasseter instead used squash and stretch , which was also calculated by the QP, to convincingly animate the bouncing balls. As Red's Dream was being developed, space at Pixar was growing tight in its Marin County bungalow; during production, the animation group, consisting of Lasseter alongside several "technical directors" who created models and shaders and such, worked out of

2640-436: The PIC, but it turned out that the machine's design left its processors without enough memory to use a program as complex as Chapreyes, and thus Apodaca was able to convert only a portion of its features for use with the computers. On account of these limitations, the dream sequence ended up looking cruder than the rest of the film, and Red's Dream was the only Pixar film to be made using the PIC. The clown, nicknamed "Lumpy" by

2720-475: The Pixar staff to make a film that made use the Pixar Image Computer and the rendering software Chapreyes. Lasseter began to develop a story about a circus clown who is upstaged by his own unicycle, while William Reeves and Eben Ostby were simultaneously working on their own ideas; Ostby had wanted to animate a bicycle , and Reeves was working on creating a rainy setting in a city. Ultimately,

2800-426: The audience, realizing that it is still in the bike shop. Depressed, it returns to the corner where it was previously resting and becomes inanimate again, waiting its fate. Red's Dream was the second short film produced by computer animation studio Pixar , following Luxo Jr. , the studio's previous short film. For their next short film, which was to be presented at the 1987 SIGGRAPH convention, Ed Catmull wanted

2880-401: The body. Expanded excavations within the sacrum are present making it into a hollow cylinder-shape. Sacral neural spines are fused together into a thin plate. The posteriormost caudal vertebra was lightly fused to the sacral vertebrae, becoming part of the plate. Internally, the neural canal was enlarged. The shape of the tail was typical of diplodocids, being comparatively slender, due to

2960-505: The bones which aided in keeping the animal lighter. Within the vertebrae as well, smooth bone walls in addition to diverticula would make pockets of air to keep the bones light. Similar structures are observable in birds and large mammals. The cervical vertebrae were stouter than those of other diplodocids, as in Apatosaurus . On the lateral sides of the cervicals, apatosaurines had well-developed and thick parapophyses (extensions on

3040-413: The carnivorous theropods Allosaurus , Marshosaurus and Ceratosaurus . This formation was a hotspot of sauropod biodiversity, with over 16 recognized genera, which resulted in niche partitioning between different sauropods. The discovery of a large and fairly complete sauropod skeleton was announced in 1879 by Othniel Charles Marsh , a professor of paleontology at Yale University . The specimen

3120-548: The characteristic but fragile cervical vertebrae. Marsh believed that Brontosaurus was a member of the Atlantosauridae , a clade of sauropod dinosaurs he named in 1877 that also included Atlantosaurus and Apatosaurus . A year later in 1880, another partial postcranial Brontosaurus skeleton was collected near Como Bluff by Reed, including well-preserved limb elements. Marsh named this second skeleton Brontosaurus amplus ("large thunder lizard") in 1881, but it

3200-450: The completion of Red's Dream , animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston , two of Walt Disney 's legendary original nine animators known as the " Nine Old Men ", visited Lasseter at Pixar and they watched a screening. Thomas was evidently freed of his former doubts about computer animation, expressed in a 1984 essay in which he argued computer animation could never produce anything as meaningful as its hand-drawn predecessor. After watching

3280-726: The family Diplodocidae , which was a group of sauropods that had shorter necks and longer tails compared to other families like brachiosaurs and mamenchisaurs . Diplodocids first evolved in the Middle Jurassic but peaked in diversity during the Late Jurassic with forms like Brontosaurus before becoming extinct in the Early Cretaceous. Brontosaurus is a genus in the subfamily Apatosaurinae , which includes only it and Apatosaurus, which are distinguished by their firm builds and thick necks. Although Apatosaurinae

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3360-694: The film WALL-E : These films contain references to the film Up : These films or shorts contain references to the film Brave : These films contain references to the film Inside Out : These films contain references to the film Coco : These films contain references to the film Turning Red : These films contain references to The Adventures of André and Wally B. : These films contain references to Luxo, Jr. : These films contain references to Red's Dream : These films contain references to Tin Toy : These films contain references to Knick Knack : The following Pixar films reference For

3440-452: The film, he shook Lasseter's hand and stated meaningfully to him, "John, you did it." Brontosaurus Brontosaurus ( / ˌ b r ɒ n t ə ˈ s ɔːr ə s / ; meaning "thunder lizard" from the Greek words βροντή , brontē "thunder" and σαῦρος , sauros "lizard") is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in present-day United States during

3520-417: The filmmakers, was one of Pixar's first human characters; in order to give him an "organic" facial structure, the character was first sculpted into a model and then scanned into a computer using a digitizer. The scenes with juggling were created by animating the unicycle's path, and then put the balls into the setting, with a quadratic programming algorithm automatically calculating their traveling path. Due to

3600-451: The first and last two letters, "TO" and "TA", worn off so it simply appears as "YO") with a rocket on the roof featuring the restaurant's logo, as seen in Toy Story , Toy Story 2 , and Toy Story 3 (though in Toy Story 2 , the truck model is called a "Gyoza" as seen on the owner's manual). There is a Pizza Planet reference in every Pixar feature film to date except for the 2004 film The Incredibles . Lee Unkrich confirmed that there

3680-400: The first specimen of Apatosaurus where a skull was found articulated with its cervical vertebrae was described. This specimen, CMC VP 7180, was found to differ in both skull and neck features from A. louisae , and the specimen was found to have a majority of features related to those of A. ajax . Another specimen of an Apatosaurine now referred to Brontosaurus was discovered in 1993 by

3760-460: The following references to Monsters, Inc. or Monsters University : These Pixar films and shorts contain the following references to Finding Nemo and Finding Dory : These Pixar films contain the following references to The Incredibles and Incredibles 2 : These films and shorts contain references to Cars , Cars 2 or Cars 3 : These films contain references to the film Ratatouille : These films contain references to

3840-453: The fused pubes and ischia . The limb bones were also very robust, with the humerus resembling that of Camarasaurus , and those of B. excelsus being nearly identical to those of Apatosaurus ajax . The humerus had a thin bone shaft and larger transverse ends. Its anterior end bears a large deltopectoral crest , which was on the extremities of the bone. Charles Gilmore in 1936 noted that previous reconstructions erroneously proposed that

3920-694: The group name. Originally named by its discoverer Othniel Charles Marsh in 1879, Brontosaurus had long been considered a junior synonym of Apatosaurus ; its type species, Brontosaurus excelsus , was reclassified as A. excelsus in 1903. However, an extensive study published in 2015 by a joint British-Portuguese research team concluded that Brontosaurus was a valid genus of sauropod distinct from Apatosaurus . Nevertheless, not all paleontologists agree with this division. The same study classified two additional species that had once been considered Apatosaurus and Eobrontosaurus as Brontosaurus parvus and Brontosaurus yahnahpin respectively. Cladogram of

4000-637: The illustration was featured again in Marsh's landmark publication, The Dinosaurs of North America , in 1896. At the Yale Peabody Museum , the skeleton of Brontosaurus excelsus was mounted in 1931 with a skull based on the Marsh reconstruction of the Felch Quarry skull. While at the time most museums were using Camarasaurus casts for skulls, the Peabody Museum sculpted a completely different skull based on Marsh's recon. Marsh's skull

4080-453: The lateral expansion of unbifurcated neural spines in B. parvus. Its dorsal vertebrae had short centra with large fossae (shallow excavations) on their lateral sides, though not as extensively as the cervicals’. Neural canals, which contain the spinal cord of the vertebral column, are ovate and large in the dorsals. The diapophyses protrude outward and curve downward in a hook-shape. Neural spines are thick in anterior-posterior view with

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4160-532: The lateral sides of the vertebrae that attached to cervical ribs) which would point ventrally under the centrum . These parapophyses in conjunction with dense diapophyses and cervical ribs were strong anchors for neck muscles, which could sustain extreme force. The cervicals were also more boxy than in other sauropods due to their truncated zygapophyses and tall build. These vertebrae are triangular in anterior view, whereas they most often are rounded or square in genera like Camarasaurus. Despite its pneumaticy,

4240-481: The longest and largest creatures ever to walk the earth, including Diplodocus , Supersaurus , and Barosaurus . Diplodocids first evolved during the Middle Jurassic in what is now Georgia , spreading to North America during the Late Jurassic. Brontosaurus is classified in the subfamily Apatosaurinae, which also includes Apatosaurus and possibly one or more unnamed genera. Othniel Charles Marsh described Brontosaurus as being allied to Atlantosaurus , within

4320-399: The majority of Pixar films, establishing a set of traditions that subsequent Pixar films try to include. The following is a list of all documented self-referential nods contained within Pixar films and shorts that the various filmmakers have incorporated into their movies. A113 is an Easter egg that has been inserted into several animated television shows and feature films as a homage to

4400-531: The manus bones vary within Apatosaurinae as well, with B. yahnahpin 's ratio of longest metacarpal to radius length around 0.40 or greater compared to a lower value in Apatosaurus louisae . The femora of Brontosaurus are very stout and represent some of the most robust femora of any member of Sauropoda. The tibia and fibula bones are different from the slender bones of Diplodocus but are nearly indistinguishable from those of Camarasaurus . The fibula

4480-463: The neck of Brontosaurus is thought to have been double the mass of that of other diplodocids due to the former’s sturdiness. Brontosaurus differs from Apatosaurus in that the base of the posterior dorsal vertebrae's neural spines are longer than they are wide. The cervicals of species within Brontosaurus also vary, such as the lack of tubercules on the neural spines of B. excelsus and

4560-458: The neck were deeply bifurcated on the dorsal side; that is, they carried paired spines, resulting in a wide and deep neck. The spine and tail consisted of 15 cervicals, ten dorsals, five sacrals, and about 82 caudals, based on Apatosaurus . The number of caudal vertebrae has been noted to vary, even within a species. Vertebrae in the neck, torso, and sacrum of sauropods bore large pneumatic foramina on their lateral sides. These are used to lighten

4640-563: The now defunct group Atlantosauridae . In 1878, Marsh raised his family to the rank of suborder, including Apatosaurus , Brontosaurus , Atlantosaurus , Morosaurus (= Camarasaurus ), and Diplodocus . He classified this group within Sauropoda. In 1903, Elmer S. Riggs mentioned that the name Sauropoda would be a junior synonym of earlier names, and grouped Apatosaurus within Opisthocoelia . Most authors still use Sauropoda as

4720-409: The phalanges, bearing boxy articular ends on its proximal and distal faces. The single front claw bone is slightly curved and squarely shortened on the front end. The phalangeal formula is 2-1-1-1-1, meaning the innermost finger (phalanx) on the forelimb has two bones and the next has one. The single manual claw bone ( ungual ) is slightly curved and squarely truncated on the anterior end. Proportions of

4800-403: The skull of the closely related Apatosaurus . Several skulls of Apatosaurus have been found, all of which are very small in proportion to the body. Their snouts were squared off and low, in contrast to macronarians' . Jaws of Apatosaurus and other diplodocids were lined with spatulate (chisel-like) teeth which were adapted for herbivory. Like those of other diplodocids , the vertebrae of

4880-475: The spoked bikes and the shop fixtures, a typical frame of animation from the scenes contained more than ten thousand geometric primitives, which in turn were made up of more than thirty million polygons. The dream sequence, on the other hand, was to demonstrate the rendering capabilities of the Pixar Image Computer. An engineer named Tony Apodaca had converted Pixar's rendering software to run on

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4960-422: The story for the film, Lasseter said that he wanted to create something with more "pathos" behind it, jokingly referring the film's development as Pixar's "blue period" due to the emotional drive behind the short. The film project came with two technical rationales; the bike shop scenes at the beginning and end were intended to demonstrate the rendering of highly complex imagery. Due to the geographical complexity

5040-437: The three combined their ideas, which resulted in the development of Red's Dream . The idea of a bicycle shop for a setting was inspired by Ostby, a cycling enthusiast and graphics programmer at Pixar, who had been working on generating a complex still image of a bike shop. Lasseter, Reeves and Ostby wanted to try and give the film a distinctly "dark and moody" look by having it take place in a rainy city setting. When developing

5120-444: The unicycle to roll out from underneath him and catch them. Eventually, Lumpy accidentally launches one of the balls out of the ring, prompting Red to go out and retrieve it without his notice. After realizing that his unicycle is out from beneath his feet, Lumpy falls and vanishes from the dream, after which Red catches the other two balls and juggles them to an uproarious applause; however, the dream ends, and Red awakens after bowing to

5200-488: The vertebral spines rapidly decreasing in height the farther they are from the hips. As in other diplodocids, the last portion of the tail of Brontosaurus possessed a whip-like structure. The tail also bears an extensive air-sac system to lighten its weight, as observed in specimens of B. parvus . Several scapulae are known from Brontosaurus , all of which are long and thin with relatively elongated shafts. One of traits that distinguishes Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus

5280-503: Was collected from Morrison Formation rocks at Como Bluff , Wyoming by William Harlow Reed . He identified it as belonging to an entirely new genus and species, which he named Brontosaurus excelsus , meaning "thunder lizard", from the Greek brontē / βροντη meaning "thunder" and sauros / σαυρος meaning "lizard", and from the Latin excelsus , "noble" or "high". By this time,

5360-412: Was considered a junior synonym and was therefore discarded from formal use. Despite this, at least one paleontologist—Robert T. Bakker—argued in the 1990s that A. ajax and A. excelsus are sufficiently distinct that the latter continues to merit a separate genus. In 2015, an extensive study of diplodocid relationships by Emanuel Tschopp, Octavio Mateus, and Roger Benson concluded that Brontosaurus

5440-399: Was considered a synonym of B. excelsus in 2015 . In August 1883, Marshall P. Felch collected a disarticulated partial skull (USNM V 5730) of a sauropod further south in the Felch Quarry at Garden Park , Colorado and sent the specimen to Yale. Marsh referred the skull to B. excelsus , later featuring it in a skeletal reconstruction of the B. excelsus type specimen in 1891 and

5520-400: Was falsely theorized to possibly have possessed a Camarasaurus -like skull, based on a disarticulated Camarasaurus -like tooth found at the precise site where an Apatosaurus specimen was found years before. However, this tooth does not come from Apatosaurus . On October 20, 1979, after the publications by McIntosh and Berman, the first skull of an Apatosaurus was mounted on a skeleton in

5600-453: Was found a few meters away from a skeleton (specimen CM 3018) identified as the new species Apatosaurus louisae . The skull was designated CM 11162 and was very similar to the skull of Diplodocus . It was accepted as belonging to the Apatosaurus specimen by Douglass and Carnegie Museum director William J. Holland , although other scientists, most notably Osborn, rejected this identification. Holland defended his view in 1914 in an address to

5680-407: Was inaccurate for several other reasons: it included forward-pointing nasals, something truly different to any other dinosaur, and fenestrae differing from the drawing and other skulls. The mandible was based on a Camarasaurus '. In 1998, the Felch Quarry skull that Marsh included in his 1896 skeletal restoration was suggested to belong to Brachiosaurus instead and this was supported in 2020 with

5760-418: Was indeed a valid genus of sauropod distinct from Apatosaurus . The scientists developed a statistical method to more objectively assess differences between fossil genera and species and concluded that Brontosaurus could be "resurrected" as a valid name. They assigned two former Apatosaurus species, A. parvus, and A. yahnahpin , to Brontosaurus , as well as the type species B. excelsus . The publication

5840-583: Was mentioned in the literature until the 1970s when John Stanton McIntosh and David Berman redescribed the skulls of Diplodocus and Apatosaurus in 1975. They found that though he never published his opinion, Holland was almost certainly correct in that Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus had a Diplodocus -like skull. According to them, many skulls long thought to belong to Diplodocus might instead be those of Apatosaurus . They reassigned multiple skulls to Apatosaurus based on associated and closely associated vertebrae. Though they supported Holland, Apatosaurus

5920-407: Was met with some criticism from other paleontologists, including Michael D'Emic, Donald Prothero , who criticized the mass media reaction to this study as superficial and premature, and many others below . Some paleontologists, such as John and Rebecca Foster , continue to consider Brontosaurus as a synonym of Apatosaurus . Brontosaurus was a large, long-necked, quadrupedal animal with

6000-510: Was named in 1929, the group was not used validly until an extensive 2015 paper, which found Brontosaurus to be valid. However, the status of Brontosaurus is still uncertain, with some paleontologists still considering it a synonym of Apatosaurus . Being from the Morrison Formation, Brontosaurus coexisted with a menagerie of other taxa such as the sauropods Diplodocus, Barosaurus, and Brachiosaurus ; herbivorous ornithischians Stegosaurus , Dryosaurus , and Nanosaurus ; as well as

6080-516: Was overseen by Adam Hermann, who failed to find Brontosaurus skulls. Hermann was forced to sculpt a stand-in skull by hand. Henry Fairfield Osborn noted in a publication that the skull was "largely conjectural and based on that of Morosaurus " (now Camarasaurus ). In 1909, an Apatosaurus skull was found, during the first expedition to what would become the Carnegie Quarry at Dinosaur National Monument , led by Earl Douglass. The skull

6160-412: Was placed on the skeleton. This was not a delicate skull like that of Diplodocus , which would later turn out to be more accurate, but was based on "the biggest, thickest, strongest skull bones, lower jaws, and tooth crowns from three different quarries". These skulls were likely those of Camarasaurus , the only other sauropod of which good skull material was known at the time. The mount construction

6240-529: Was the direct predecessor to Brontosaurus, although Tschopp et al .'s phylogenetic analysis placed B. yahnahpin as the basalmost species of Brontosaurus. Almost all 20th-century paleontologists agreed with Riggs that all Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus species should be classified in a single genus. According to the rules of the ICZN , which governs the scientific names of animals, the name Apatosaurus , having been published first, had priority; Brontosaurus

6320-427: Was very complete, only missing the feet, from the specimen AMNH 592 were added to the mount, lower leg and shoulder bones, added from AMNH 222, and tail bones, added from AMNH 339. To finish the mount, the rest of the tail was fashioned to appear as Marsh believed it should, which meant it had too few vertebrae. In addition, a sculpted model of what the museum felt the skull of this massive creature might have looked like

6400-530: Was very well-preserved, bearing many cervical (neck) and caudal (tail) vertebrae, and is the most complete definite specimen of the species. The skeletons were granted a new genus and species name, Elosaurus parvus ("little field lizard"), by Olof A. Peterson and Charles Gilmore in 1902. Both of the specimens came from the Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation. The species was later transferred to Apatosaurus by several authors In 2008,

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