Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, you know you've made it in this
Speaker 1: wild world of ours when astronomers name something after you.
Speaker 1: And On April eighth of nineteen ninety one, scientists at
Speaker 1: the European Southern Observatory spotted a previously unknown asteroid in
Speaker 1: orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Since the thing needed a name,
Speaker 1: they called it nine nine five four. Brachiosaurus a long armed,
Speaker 1: long necked plant eating dinosaur. A Rachiosaurus resided in what's
Speaker 1: now North America during the late Jurassic Period, about one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty five to one hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: years ago. Today, the animal lives on in our popular culture.
Speaker 1: For example, in the original Jurassic Park film, a herd
Speaker 1: of them grazing are the first majestic creatures we see,
Speaker 1: set to John William's sweeping score. But this dinosaur fame
Speaker 1: comes with an astrisk. Portrayals of the giant reptile in
Speaker 1: the Jurassic Park films were largely based on a different dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Its taxonomical name is Giraffetitan bronchi. This is a mix
Speaker 1: up that goes back a long way in paleontology anyway, Okay.
Speaker 1: In the year nineteen hundred, while on a fossil finding
Speaker 1: trip around Grand Junction, Colorado, paleontologist Elmer Riggs and his
Speaker 1: assistant H. William Menki came across a very large and
Speaker 1: very incomplete skeleton of a sauropod. The sarropods were a
Speaker 1: diverse group of herbivorous dinosaurs. Generally, they had long necks,
Speaker 1: small heads, and column like legs. Many species were flat
Speaker 1: out enormous. Indeed, the biggest land animal to ever draw
Speaker 1: breath was undoubtedly a sarapod, but the skeleton Rigs and
Speaker 1: Menkey on Earth was missing several pieces. All that remained
Speaker 1: were some ribs and vertebraates, a partial hip, an incomplete
Speaker 1: shoulder blade, and two gigantic limb bones. Obviously, this animal
Speaker 1: was a sauropod, but it had weird proportions. Mossauropods found
Speaker 1: before the year nineteen hundred had forelombs that looked much
Speaker 1: shorter than their hind limbs. Yet the situation was reversed here.
Speaker 1: Riggs was fascinated by the right humorus, or upper armbone
Speaker 1: that came with the skeleton at six feet or two
Speaker 1: meters in length. It was slightly longer than the dinosaur's
Speaker 1: right femur or upper leg bone, which was also preserved.
Speaker 1: In an article published in nineteen oh one in the
Speaker 1: journal Science, Riggs wrote that, along with some other bones,
Speaker 1: the quote extraordinary length of the humorists suggests an animal
Speaker 1: whose shoulders would rise high above the pelvic region, giving
Speaker 1: the body something of a draft like proportion. Two years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh three, he named the new animal Brachyosaurus althorax.
Speaker 1: The name Brachiosaurus means arm lizard, while the species name
Speaker 1: alt thorax roughly translates to deep chested, nice and descriptive,
Speaker 1: but okay. Time for a plot twist. Between nineteen oh
Speaker 1: nine and nineteen thirteen, German scientists working in East Africa
Speaker 1: removed two hundred and twenty five tons of fossils from
Speaker 1: mainland Tanzania, which was part of a German colony back then.
Speaker 1: The piece de resistance another massive sauropod skeleton. Unlike the
Speaker 1: incomplete Colorado specimen, this individual came with an albeit partial skull,
Speaker 1: plus most of the ribs and vertebra were recovered. They
Speaker 1: were identified as Brachiosaurus. Material and eventually assigned to a
Speaker 1: new species, Brachiosaurus bronchi. That African giant stretched over eighty
Speaker 1: feet or twenty five meters long and could have carried
Speaker 1: its head about forty feet or thirteen meters off the ground.
Speaker 1: The towering specimen, and now on display at the Berlin
Speaker 1: Natural History Museum in Germany, is a single tallest mounted
Speaker 1: dinosaur skeleton in the world. Crucially, Brochiosaurus bronchi gave paleo
Speaker 1: artists more fossils to work with than North America's Bronchiosaurus
Speaker 1: alta thorax. Ever, did the effects teams behind Jurassic Park
Speaker 1: modeled their Bronchiosaurus design on the African species. Other artists
Speaker 1: have done likewise over the years. Then things got complicated.
Speaker 1: One Gregory S. Paul, a renowned dinosaur illustrator, pointed out
Speaker 1: some anatomical differences between the two Brochiosaurus species in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight. He claimed the tusar pods were so distinct
Speaker 1: from each other they really didn't belong in the same genus. Later,
Speaker 1: a two thousand and nine study written by Michael P.
Speaker 1: Taylor and published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology concurred.
Speaker 1: Brochiosaurus Bronchi has since been reclassified and renamed. It's now
Speaker 1: known as Giraffatitan bronchi. But okay, now that we've met Giraffatitan,
Speaker 1: let's get to know the real Brochiosaurus, shall we? Because
Speaker 1: of all the naming drama, Brochiosaurus altathorax, the dinosaur that
Speaker 1: Elmer Riggs described in nineteen oh three, is the only
Speaker 1: Brochiosaurus species that experts currently recognize. Brachiosaurus had a tail
Speaker 1: that was both longer and taller than Gerrafhatitans. Also, as
Speaker 1: Taylor wrote in two thousand and nine, it carried a
Speaker 1: greater proportion of its mass on the forelimbs. Hey, you've
Speaker 1: got extra large arms, you might as well use him right.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt that Brochiosaurus was a hefty beast. One
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen paper published in the Journal Paleontology gave a
Speaker 1: mass estimate of sixty four tons for Bronchiosaurus. Other researchers
Speaker 1: think the dinosaur was lighter, perhaps to picking the scales
Speaker 1: at only forty four tons or so. Judging by the
Speaker 1: known false Brachiosaurus was probably around eighty feet or twenty
Speaker 1: five meters long. At the shoulder, it might have stood
Speaker 1: twenty feet or six meters tall, though it could lift
Speaker 1: its head much much higher. The exact shape of that
Speaker 1: head is debatable. A possible Brachiosaurus skull emerged in Central
Speaker 1: Colorado during the eighteen eighties. However, apart from a single
Speaker 1: neckbone which was accidentally destroyed, the head was found in isolation,
Speaker 1: so as of this writing, there's no way to be
Speaker 1: sure if it belonged to a Brachiosaurus or some altogether
Speaker 1: different sauropod. Besides Brachiosaurus, there were loads of other long
Speaker 1: necked dinos stamping around North America during the Late Jurassic period.
Speaker 1: A prehistory buffs should be well acquainted with the Morrison Formation,
Speaker 1: internationally famous for its rich fossil record. This is a
Speaker 1: geologic sequence of shales, sandstones, and limestones that range from
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty five to one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: eight million years old. The Morrison runs all the way
Speaker 1: from Monte Hannah and the Dakotas to New Mexico and Arizona.
Speaker 1: Brochiosaurus altathorax is just one of many sauropods that have
Speaker 1: been found in these rocks. By some counts, about thirty
Speaker 1: distinctive sauropod species lived in what's now the Morrison Formation,
Speaker 1: including species of Diplodocus and Brontosaurus. It's fun to think
Speaker 1: about how such giant animals could have coexisted, Though not
Speaker 1: all of sauropods represented in the various Morrison deposits lived
Speaker 1: at the exact same time as for Brochiosaurus. The good
Speaker 1: old arm lizard still makes headlines now and then. A
Speaker 1: juvenile sauropod found in a Wyoming quarry was tentatively identified
Speaker 1: as a young Brochiosaurus in twenty twelve. Measuring around six
Speaker 1: feet or two meters long, the little tyke would have
Speaker 1: been a far cry from the titan that Rigs and
Speaker 1: Menkey discovered. Like they say, big things have small beginnings.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article will the real
Speaker 1: Brachysaurus Please Stand up? On HowStuffWorks dot Com? Written by
Speaker 1: Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in
Speaker 1: partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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