Wendy wore a beautiful dino-tee shirt I designed and painted. This shirt was of a purple Brontosaurus.
Now Brontosaurus is a bit of a misnomer, since, the first name
given to the animal was Apatosaurus, named after some vertebrae, I believe.
Anyway, Brontosaurus became more popular, since the
full skeleton was in the Smithsonian. It got in all the textbooks,
dinosaur books for kids, and Apatosaur was just a minor player.
Later, they found out that the vertebrae of Apatosaur were actually the same as
Brontosaurus. Apatosaurus was described and named first. What can you do. To add insult to injury,
the skull on the Smithsonian skeleton of Brontosaurus, which was found near the body,
turned out to be from a different dinosaur, another long-neck, Camarasaurus.
So, now Apatosaurus- "deceptive lizard"- is the more significant scientific name,
but still Brontosaurus is the cooler name - "thiunder lizard.".
