I’m back from Boston, and Brontosaurus (Marsh, 1879, Brontosaurus excelsus) might be back too.
The name “Brontosaurus” was made a disreputable synonym for “Apatosaurus” by the Peabody Museum in 1981, belatedly acknowledging a 1975 paper by McIntosh and Berman claiming that Othniel Marsh (who named both dinosaurs) had incorrectly mounted a Camarasaurus skull on an Apatosaurus skeleton in his famous 1883 Brontosaurus restoration. Fans of the Flintstones were quite naturally appalled, and Stephen Jay Gould wrote a couple of popular essays about it.
Earlier today Emanuel Tschopp published a thesis detailing an exhaustive analysis of all the existing Diplodocid type specimens.
“The present paper increases knowledge about the phylogenetic relationships of diplodocid sauropods. In order to resolve relationships within Diplodocidae, a specimen-based phylogenetic analysis was performed, which included all holotypes that have been identified as belonging to a diplodocid sauropod at some point in history.”
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“The numerical approaches established in the present analysis allowed a reassessment of the validity of the numerous taxonomic names proposed within Diplodocidae. Thereby, it was found that apatosaurine diversity was particularly underestimated in the past. One genus previously synonymized with Apatosaurus is considered to be valid based on our quantitative approaches: Brontosaurus forms the sister clade to Apatosaurus in the present analysis. On the other hand, Elosaurus and Eobrontosaurus were found to be junior synonyms of Brontosaurus, and one more cluster of specimens was recovered at the base of Apatosaurinae, which might even represent a further, new apatosaurine genus. Apatosaurus was found to include only the two species A. ajax and A. louisae. This results in three genera and six species belonging to Apatosaurinae. In a less inclusive and less detailed specimen-based analysis of Apatosaurus, Upchurch, Tomida & Barrett (2004) found five species as probably valid, but did not include Eobrontosaurus yahnahpin. The species count recovered by our analysis is comparable to that proposed by Upchurch, Tomida & Barrett (2004).”
The analysis combined pairwise dissimilarity and results from TNT, the latter of which seems appropriately named since we’re talking about resolving taxonomic problems left over from the Bone Wars.
Along with the resurrection of Marsh’s original type specimen of genus brontosaurus excelsus, this research has spawned a proposal to the ICZN that the type species for Diplodocidae be changed from D. longus (due to the “undiagnostic, fragmentary holotype specimen”) to D. carnegii.