Brontosaur

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A massive long-necked plant-eating dinosaur of the Jurassic period, a name once used for what is now called Apatosaurus
2. An enormous herbivorous dinosaur with a long neck and tail, formerly given as the common name for the animal now known as Apatosaurus
3. Any of several huge sauropod dinosaurs that roamed ancient landscapes, a label long applied to the genus now classed as Apatosaurus

Etymology: The name began as a joke about thunder. Greek "bronte" means "thunder" and "sauros" means "lizard," and the American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh combined them to name the genus Brontosaurus, which he described as a huge, thunderously heavy reptile. Marsh was one of the leading fossil hunters of his era, and he named many dinosaurs during a bitter rivalry with Edward Drinker Cope. "Brontosaur" is a clipped, informal form of that genus name, the sort of shortening that popular writing and museum talk produce once a long scientific name becomes familiar. The root words remain transparent: a creature whose footfalls were imagined as thunder.

Synonyms: brontosaurus