Whatever happened to the Brontosaurus, when i was a kid the two big plant eating dinos were the Diplodocus and the Brontosausus, now it seems to be called Brachiosaurus, i looked it up and its aparently down to genus of dinosaur vs genus of lizard, but you never hear the name Brontsaurus in relation to dinos these days only in relation to the extendable platforms the fire brigade use.
I remember "
brachiosaurus" from books I was reading in the 1970s. It's a different beast. There were several species of dinosaur of the same general shape.
At first sight, the brachiosaurus looks like a typical sauropod dinosaur: large body, 4 legs, long tail, long neck, small head — very much the same sort of thing as a diplodocus or brontosaurus. Fred Flintstone might have used it as a crane.
However, the brachiosaurus was unusual in having front legs that were longer than its back legs. Hence it's name translates as "arm lizard". The other sauropods had long back legs, short front legs.
I double checked this today before writing this but I had remembered this correctly.
Brontosaurus ("thunder lizard") has at various times over the last few decades been classified as an "
apatosaurus". It is a member of the family
Diplodocidae which also includes diplodocus itself.
Bear in mind that there is only limited fossil evidence of any of these. We are lucky to have a few complete or nearly complete skeletons, but these are not always enough to give us a clear idea of populations and species relationships. In some cases, whole species are inferred from a few isolated bones. As more evidence comes to light, species are sometimes reclassified.
A favourite of mine as a kid was the bipedal dinosaur that was proposed as having a single horn on its nose. Later investigation concluded that this was the only remaining thumb from the skeleton that was being reconstructed. As there was only one part of that shape, they assumed it went along the central axis, and a horn on the nose seemed the obvious answer.
A quick search today reminds me
it was the Iguanodon