Re: BRONTOSAURUS FOREVER!

["dinotracker" <dinotracker@earthlink.net>]

    Tim Williams said:

>I still hold out some hope that Elmer Riggs was right, and the type
specimen
for _Apatosaurus ajax_ (a juvenile) is non-diagnostic at the species level,
and _Brontosaurus excelsus_ (based on an adult specimen) wins out as a valid
species for the remaining hypodigm.<

    Whether or not that happens, fellow list member James O. Farlow, et al,
in a great paper entitled, Brontopodus birdi, Lower Cretaceous Sauropod
Footprints from the U.S. Gulf Coastal Plain [1989], provides the world an
ichnospecific name that preserves the image of the 'thunderous' foot-falls
which the name Brontosaurus (thunder lizard) was surely intended to evoke.

    It is hard to imagine a more appropriate name for footprints of such
gigantic terrestrial animals.  The sauropod that produced the type tracks
called Brontopodus [thunder foot] birdi, has been said to be Pleurocoelus.
That suggestion is entirely appropriate because bones of the sauropod
Pleurocoelus, and only those of that specific sauropod, have been found
nearby in the same formation as the tracks.

    Even if, after many generations, the name Brontosaurus becomes,
unfortunately, all but forgotten, a 'ghost' of that great and appropriate
name shall live on as a thunderous 'echo' in the footprints of giants.

    Thanks HP Jim Farlow, for that legacy!

    Long live Brontosaurus!

    Ray Stanford

"You know my method.  It is founded upon the observance of trifles." --
Sherlock Holmes in The Boscombe Valley Mystery