There Never Was A Brontosaurus

Brontosaurus - the critter that never was

According to an NPR posting entitled, "Forget Extinct: The Brontosaurus Never Even Existed," there never was such a thing as a brontosaurus. The belief that there was turns out to be the product of a "Bones War" between two over-zealous, fame-hungry nineteenth-century paleontologists. The thing is scientists have known since 1903, one hundred and nine (almost ten!) years ago, that there never was a creature that we have called by the name, "brontosaurus".  Weird.  Up until this morning, I believed in the brontosaurus and would have answered, "Yes, of course," had I been asked if I did.

Now, one could head off in a couple of directions from the fact that the brontosaurus was invented by bad science rather than discovered by good science.  We could explore the boundaries between belief and fact, which are not nearly as sharply drawn as we might think.  Or, it would be fun to rag a bit on science, which is a whole lot more fallible and human than some of its devotees like to pretend.  But, why ruin a perfectly good story?  If you have the time, I'd suggest you follow the above link to the story about how and why there never was such a thing as a brontosaurus.  And, if that isn't enough, check out this posting, entitled, "The Great Brontosaurus Hoax." It points out that scientists continued to use the name brontosaurus until 1974, which may help explain why we the public didn't know it was a name without a thing to be named.  The picture accompanying this posting is from yet another source, "Brontosauruses Never Existed," which has still more facts on the matter.

All of this makes one wonder what else there might be that we know is true that isn't true.