![]() ![]() If you aren't impressed by comparisons that turned out to be irrelevant, the femur is of a decent size (98 in/2,500 mm long). The femur caused Marsh to once again produce his remarkable crocodile in order to estimate a length of 115 ft (35 m). immanis was represented by at least a femur and caudal vertebrae. Otherwise, you're looking at the luminaries Morosaurus impar, Allosaurus lucaris, Laosaurus gracilis, and L. Creosaurus atrox is probably the most famous taxon it names, because it has been adopted by Allosaurus fragilis skeptics since the 1980s as the symbol of their alternate allosaur. This article, incidentally, is not one of his more memorable works. immanis (Marsh 1878a), from Lakes Quarry 10 at Morrison (Ostrom and McIntosh 1966). Marsh was not satisfied with there being only one species of Atlantosaurus, so in 1878 he gave the world A. Plate XVII, Marsh (1896) (pay attention, because #2 is actually above #1 on this plate). The type sacrum of Atlantosaurus montanus (YPM 1835) in ventral view (underside). After Marsh renamed Titanosaurus montanus, Titanosaurus was never again involved in any taxonomic controversies. Although we know now that sauropods did not have the proportions of crocodiles, 80 ft (24 m) is not actually a bad guess for a large Morrison sauropod, so give him credit for being right for the wrong reason. There are a few points of interest for our topic, though: Marsh now recognizes the rocks as Jurassic in age he is now calling the rocks the Atlantosaurus beds, due to the abundance of Atlantosaurus he coins the family Atlantosauridae and he considers Atlantosaurus the "largest of land animals", reaching "at least eighty feet long" if proportioned like a crocodile. If you're looking for piercing insight, thorough description, or even illustrations, you'll have to go into hibernation for a couple of decades' worth of papers: he described the four new genera and species within three pages. This article, incidentally, also coins Apatosaurus ajax, Apatosaurus grandis (now Camarasaurus grandis), Allosaurus fragilis, and, er, Nanosaurus rex, the ex- Othnielia three hits out of four ain't bad. Having surely been taught a lesson on the dangers of not publishing fast enough, and with admirable speed for the 1870s, Marsh published the replacement name Atlantosaurus before the end of the year (Marsh 1877b). Unbeknownst to Marsh, he'd been pipped at the post by Richard Lydekker, who had just named a sauropod from India Titanosaurus indicus (Lydekker 1877). The reader gets the impression that Marsh didn't know much of anything about his Titanosaurus, given that he considered it a possible "distant ally" of Hadrosaurus agilis (later known as Claosaurus, but still decidedly on the hadrosaur side of things). (The publication also informed the world he had just renamed the preoccupied Laelaps to Dryptosaurus, which he accomplished with a footnote.) The new gigantic dinosaur, which he named Titanosaurus montanus, was known from remains including a partial sacrum and a femur (Marsh 1877a). Marsh, who in July 1877 issued a brief notice to inform the world of a "new and gigantic dinosaur" from the "Cretaceous" of Colorado (Arthur Lakes' Quarry 1 at Morrison, Colorado, relocated in 2009). The first notice of Atlantosaurus comes from O. (While you're there, ponder that as recently as the early 1980s it was still a going thing to classify sauropods in two groups based on having peg-like or spoon-like teeth, shades of coelurosaurs and carnosaurs.) So, what is Atlantosaurus and what happened to it? Go ahead, check your copy of Glut 1982 I'll wait. Yet Atlantosaurus was considered a viable genus for years, receiving at least lip service as the pater familias of Atlantosauridae/Atlantosaurinae into the early 1980s. About the only Morrison sauropods with less press these days are Caulodon, one of Cope's innumerable tooth taxa Dystylosaurus, the Gummo Marx of '80-'90s Morrison dinosaurs and Uintasaurus, a Camarasaurus from Dinosaur National Monument that got to be special for a while. Shamelessly appropriated from Wikipedia, appropriated in turn from De Wereld vóór de schepping van den mensch, Nicolas Camille Flammarion (1886), original title "Le Monde avant la création de l’homme" (1886). The majestic Atlantosaurus, next to an elephant that strangely seems to have arrived via 19th century Photoshop. Known from but a sacrum, it was famous long ago" ![]()
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