Some friends just gifted me a brontosaurus soft toy as a birthday gift, and it sent me down a small rabbit hole so here's a little piece on the "Thunder Lizard".
The brontosaurus was a sauropod (one of those long-necked, long-tailed plant-eaters) that plodded around in the Late Jurassic, roughly 150 million years ago. It's got a great origin story for a fictional-sounding name: "Brontosaurus" means "thunder lizard," and for most of the 20th century it didn't even officially exist. Scientists decided back in 1903 that it was just an Apatosaurus wearing a different label, and the name got quietly retired. Then in 2015, a fresh study looked at the bones again and argued for giving Brontosaurus its genus back. So the thunder lizard is technically a dinosaur that went extinct twice: once when the asteroid showed up, and once when a paleontologist crossed its name off the list. It just refused to stay gone.
It wasn't the absolute biggest sauropod going around, but it was no small thing either. Somewhere around 22 meters nose to tail and weighing as much as a few elephants stacked together. The neck did most of the work, sweeping side to side to graze without the animal having to move its enormous body much. Built efficient. Built to last. And it did last, for tens of millions of years. My version is a more manageable 55 centimeters, and the reviews warn that the neck flops over and won't stand up on its own, which, honestly, feels true to a 15-tonne animal trying to hold up a neck that long. Built efficient. Hopefully.
My friends said that they gifted it to me because the soft toy's smile was exactly how I smile and I honestly agree with them. It is too large for me to cuddle with it so I wake up and pet it and we exchange the exact same smile everyday.
