Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, you know you've made it in this wild world of ours when astronomers name something after you. And On April eighth of nineteen ninety one, scientists at the European Southern Observatory spotted a previously unknown asteroid in orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Since the thing needed a name, they called it nine nine five four. Brachiosaurus a long armed,
long necked plant eating dinosaur. A Rachiosaurus resided in what's now North America during the late Jurassic Period, about one hundred and fifty five to one hundred and fifty million years ago. Today, the animal lives on in our popular culture. For example, in the original Jurassic Park film, a herd of them grazing are the first majestic creatures we see, set to John William's sweeping score. But this dinosaur fame
comes with an astrisk. Portrayals of the giant reptile in the Jurassic Park films were largely based on a different dinosaur. Its taxonomical name is Giraffetitan bronchi. This is a mix up that goes back a long way in paleontology anyway, Okay. In the year nineteen hundred, while on a fossil finding trip around Grand Junction, Colorado, paleontologist Elmer Riggs and his assistant H. William Menki came across a very large and very incomplete skeleton of a sauropod. The sarropods were a
diverse group of herbivorous dinosaurs. Generally, they had long necks, small heads, and column like legs. Many species were flat out enormous. Indeed, the biggest land animal to ever draw breath was undoubtedly a sarapod, but the skeleton Rigs and Menkey on Earth was missing several pieces. All that remained were some ribs and vertebraates, a partial hip, an incomplete shoulder blade, and two gigantic limb bones. Obviously, this animal
was a sauropod, but it had weird proportions. Mossauropods found before the year nineteen hundred had forelombs that looked much shorter than their hind limbs. Yet the situation was reversed here. Riggs was fascinated by the right humorus, or upper armbone that came with the skeleton at six feet or two meters in length. It was slightly longer than the dinosaur's right femur or upper leg bone, which was also preserved.
In an article published in nineteen oh one in the journal Science, Riggs wrote that, along with some other bones, the quote extraordinary length of the humorists suggests an animal whose shoulders would rise high above the pelvic region, giving the body something of a draft like proportion. Two years later, in nineteen oh three, he named the new animal Brachyosaurus althorax.
The name Brachiosaurus means arm lizard, while the species name alt thorax roughly translates to deep chested, nice and descriptive, but okay. Time for a plot twist. Between nineteen oh nine and nineteen thirteen, German scientists working in East Africa removed two hundred and twenty five tons of fossils from mainland Tanzania, which was part of a German colony back then.
The piece de resistance another massive sauropod skeleton. Unlike the incomplete Colorado specimen, this individual came with an albeit partial skull, plus most of the ribs and vertebra were recovered. They were identified as Brachiosaurus. Material and eventually assigned to a new species, Brachiosaurus bronchi. That African giant stretched over eighty feet or twenty five meters long and could have carried its head about forty feet or thirteen meters off the ground.
The towering specimen, and now on display at the Berlin Natural History Museum in Germany, is a single tallest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world. Crucially, Brochiosaurus bronchi gave paleo artists more fossils to work with than North America's Bronchiosaurus alta thorax. Ever, did the effects teams behind Jurassic Park modeled their Bronchiosaurus design on the African species. Other artists have done likewise over the years. Then things got complicated.
One Gregory S. Paul, a renowned dinosaur illustrator, pointed out some anatomical differences between the two Brochiosaurus species in nineteen eighty eight. He claimed the tusar pods were so distinct from each other they really didn't belong in the same genus. Later, a two thousand and nine study written by Michael P. Taylor and published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology concurred. Brochiosaurus Bronchi has since been reclassified and renamed. It's now
known as Giraffatitan bronchi. But okay, now that we've met Giraffatitan, let's get to know the real Brochiosaurus, shall we? Because of all the naming drama, Brochiosaurus altathorax, the dinosaur that Elmer Riggs described in nineteen oh three, is the only Brochiosaurus species that experts currently recognize. Brachiosaurus had a tail that was both longer and taller than Gerrafhatitans. Also, as Taylor wrote in two thousand and nine, it carried a
greater proportion of its mass on the forelimbs. Hey, you've got extra large arms, you might as well use him right. There's no doubt that Brochiosaurus was a hefty beast. One twenty seventeen paper published in the Journal Paleontology gave a mass estimate of sixty four tons for Bronchiosaurus. Other researchers think the dinosaur was lighter, perhaps to picking the scales at only forty four tons or so. Judging by the known false Brachiosaurus was probably around eighty feet or twenty
five meters long. At the shoulder, it might have stood twenty feet or six meters tall, though it could lift its head much much higher. The exact shape of that head is debatable. A possible Brachiosaurus skull emerged in Central Colorado during the eighteen eighties. However, apart from a single neckbone which was accidentally destroyed, the head was found in isolation, so as of this writing, there's no way to be sure if it belonged to a Brachiosaurus or some altogether
different sauropod. Besides Brachiosaurus, there were loads of other long necked dinos stamping around North America during the Late Jurassic period. A prehistory buffs should be well acquainted with the Morrison Formation, internationally famous for its rich fossil record. This is a geologic sequence of shales, sandstones, and limestones that range from one hundred and fifty five to one hundred and forty
eight million years old. The Morrison runs all the way from Monte Hannah and the Dakotas to New Mexico and Arizona. Brochiosaurus altathorax is just one of many sauropods that have been found in these rocks. By some counts, about thirty distinctive sauropod species lived in what's now the Morrison Formation,
including species of Diplodocus and Brontosaurus. It's fun to think about how such giant animals could have coexisted, Though not all of sauropods represented in the various Morrison deposits lived at the exact same time as for Brochiosaurus. The good old arm lizard still makes headlines now and then. A juvenile sauropod found in a Wyoming quarry was tentatively identified
as a young Brochiosaurus in twenty twelve. Measuring around six feet or two meters long, the little tyke would have been a far cry from the titan that Rigs and Menkey discovered. Like they say, big things have small beginnings. Today's episode is based on the article will the real Brachysaurus Please Stand up? On HowStuffWorks dot Com? Written by Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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