Home » Science & Nature » Paleontology » Brontosaurus versus Apatosaurus

Brontosaurus versus Apatosaurus

© Beverly Eschberger

"What's in a name?" Juliet asked the night. Well, Romeo's last name might not have bothered Juliet, but names are very important to biologists.

There are biologists all over the world, all speaking different languages, and it is very important that they know they are talking about the same animal. In order to do this, they have to agree on what to call different animals. So, biologists always use what we call scientific or binomial nomenclature.

"Binomial" means "two names." All animals are given both a genus and a species name. For example, Boa constrictor is conveniently both the scientific name and the common name for a very well-known snake. Humans have the scientific name "Homo sapiens," which means "wise man" (although we might not always agree about how wise specific humans might be!). Most scientific names are either in Greek or Latin. This is because, back when scientists like Linnaeus first began giving animals scientific names, Latin and Greek were the two languages studied by all scientists, so everyone could read scientific articles written in one of these languages. (See my article "Biological Nomenclature" for more information about how biologists divide animals into groups.)

In order to give an animal a name, a biologist has to publish a scientific paper in which he or she describes the animal, provides a drawing of it, and gives it a binomial name. Sometimes, two scientists might accidentally describe the same animal, giving it different names, or the same scientist might describe what he thinks are two different species, but are actually the same species. When this happens, there is an International Code of Zoological Nomenclature which has rules about what to do. The Code gives two options: either its operating committee can decide to use the oldest name published, or, if a name that does not have priority is better known than the oldest name, they can choose to use that name.

That is what happened in the case of the dinosaur known as Apatosaurus or Brontosaurus.

In the late 1800's two paleontologists named Edward Drinker Cope (1840 to 1897) and Othniel Charles Marsh (1831 to 1899) were bitter rivals, searching for dinosaur skeletons in the western United States in what are often described as "The Bone Wars." Because these two are such important figures in the history of paleontology, I feel compelled to provide biographies of both. So, next week's article will be about Cope, and the following week will be about Marsh.