Welcome Back, Brontosaurus!

The classic Marx Brontosaurus–hooray!

After years and years of lonely exile, reputation shot into disrepute, the Brontosaurus has returned as an official and bona fide dinosaur genus.

Studying the bones with new technologies, scientists have concluded that Brontosaurus was a real dinosaur, after all. A minority remain rather angrily unconvinced, and accuse the others of playing to the gallery.

For the past 20 years or so, they were rather adamant about calling the beast Apatosaurus. I’m afraid that for them, the word “Brontosaurus” conjured up distasteful images of the Flintstones, Sinclair gas stations, Alley Oop, and the beloved Marx Toy Co. Brontosaurus with the Camarasaurus head–which was not the toy company’s fault, but a conjecture by Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn, the world-famous head honcho at the American Museum of Natural History, 100 years ago. He once identified a pig’s tooth as prehistoric “Nebraska Man.” That science didn’t stay settled very long.

The Apatosaurus crowd is still cheesed off, big-time, but their numbers are shrinking. As for me, I’m glad my Marx Brontosaurs, which I held onto through all the years of exile, obloquy, and shame, may now come back out from the shadows and once again hold high their Camarasaurus heads. They should probably have something more like a Diplodocus head, but no sure-enough skull of Brontosaurus has been found yet.  It could be worse: they could’ve put a Smiley Face up there.

But who cares? Brontosaurus is back in the starting lineup! Calloo callay, oh frabjous day!

I wonder if there’s hope for “Trachodon.”