Gary A. Byers
Most adults who graduated from high school before 1980, grew up knowing more about Brontosauruses (that is the correct word!) than almost any other creature, ancient or modern. Yet, many dinosaur books published today don’t even mention them. Talk about being extinct, what happened to the Brontosaurus?
In 1877, Othniel Marsh of Yale’s Peabody Museum found a large skeleton in Wyoming and he named it Apatosaurus (“Unreal Lizard”). Two years later he found a similar but larger skeleton, and named it Brontosaurus, (“Thunder Lizard”).
Apparently, Marsh’s Thunderlizard was found without its head. Yet, when put on display, it had a head! Even today no one really knows how it happened, but Brontosaurus became world famous. So famous, that when a complete one was dug up in 1920, its attached head was discarded! This new Thunderlizard was first displayed in Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum without any head at all, and then later added a wrong head.
Only in the 1970’s did paleontologists begin to publicly admit that Brontosaurus had a head problem. Incorrect heads were replaced with correct ones in the 1980’s. Technically, Brontosaurus was just an Apatosaurus with the wrong head, and today all Brontosauruses are accurately called Apatosauruses.
Unfortunately, when evolutionary scientists finally admitted their error, they made the change so quickly and quietly most people didn’t even know it happened. Overnight one of the world’s most famous dinosaurs just disappeared, and evolutionary dinosaur books hardly mentioned it.
Evolutionary scientists who run museums had it wrong for almost a 100 years and yet they accuse Creationist scientists of doing sloppy science! Even after finally correcting the problem, they acted like it never happened!
Whatever scientists want to call him, the Bible has another name for Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus. You can find it in Job 40:15–24. Created by God on the sixth day (Gn 1:24–25), Adam is the one who first named him (Gn 2:19–20).
Bible and Spade 13:2 (Spring 2000)