Photo of the Day #38: Apatosaurus

There could scarcely be a better name for the skeletal remains of the extinct sauropod pictured above; Apatosaurus, the "deceptive lizard," proving to be the center of controversy for many years. The "tale of the missing skull" and the Apatosaurus/"Brontosaurus" controversies are perhaps the most well known, coming to a head when the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp mixing the right body with the wrong name, but the debate over which name is right (and which skull should be on the mounts) has often centered on preference as much as scientific reality. The skeletons have been corrected and the popular understanding seems to have mostly caught up (just try telling a dino-loving 10 year old that "Brontosaurus" is still valid), but paleontology is interesting not only because it studies the diversity of life through earth's history but also because it has a rich diversity of ideas and controversies all it's own, the old and the new always mixing together.

Apatosaurus was, for many of us, the first Jurassic giant that we met in books or museum halls, no set of dinosaur toys being complete without at least one "Brontosaurus." Despite this popularity, however, Apatosaurus is but one representative of a larger and more diverse group of dinosaurs, new (and seemingly ever-larger) sauropods being found at an astonishing rate from sites all over the world. While I have not yet done a "themed" day on my blog, today I'm going to celebrate sauropods as an absolutely amazing amount of new resources have come to my attention over the last 24 hours that will make today a very special day for all those with an affinity for these titans of the Mesozoic.