Dinosaurs Coloring Pages - Apatosaurus / Brontosaurus
Apatosaurus (also formerly known as Brontosaurus), was a gentle giant of a dinosaur and only ate plants, not other dinosaurs.
Apatosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived about 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period.
The name Apatosaurus means 'deceptive lizard', so-given because the chevron bones were similar to those of a prehistoric marine lizard, Mosasaurus.
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In 1877, Othniel Charles Marsh published the name of the type species Apatosaurus ajax. He followed this in 1879 with a description of another,
more complete specimen, which he thought represented a new genus and named Brontosaurus excelsus. In 1903, Elmer Riggs pointed out that
Brontosaurus excelsus was in fact so similar to Apatosaurus ajax that it belonged in the same genus, and which Riggs re-classified as Apatosaurus
excelsus. According to the rules of the ICZN (which governs the scientific names of animals), the name Apatosaurus, having been published first,
had priority as the official name; Brontosaurus was a junior synonym and therefore discarded from formal use.
Kids love to color dinosaurs and imagine what they looked like millions of years ago. Dinosaur coloring pages are a great way to teach early earth history.
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