Sun December 9, 2012 Forget Extinct: The Brontosaurus Never Even
Existed Originally published on Sun December 9, 2012 5:09 pm It
may have something to do with all those Brontosaurus burgers
everyone's favorite modern stone-age family ate, but when you
think of a giant dinosaur with a tiny head and long, swooping
tail, the Brontosaurus is probably what you're seeing in your
mind. Well hold on: Scientifically speaking, there's no such
thing as a Brontosaurus. Even if you knew that, you may not know
how the fictional dinosaur came to star in the prehistoric
landscape of popular imagination for so long. It dates back 130
years, to a period of early U.S. paleontology known as the Bone
Wars, says Matt Lamanna, curator at the Carnegie Museum of
Natural History in Pittsburgh. The Bone Wars was the name given
to a bitter competition between two paleontologists, Yale's O.C.
Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope of Philadelphia. Lamanna says
their mutual dislike, paired with their scientific ambition, led
them to race dinosaur