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University of Wyoming

APATOSAURUSUW Geologic Museum Apatosaurus display

(FORMERLY KNOWN AS BRONTOSAURUS)
One Of Wyoming's Many Jurassic Giants

Geologic Time: 130 to 190 million years ago (Jurassic Period)

Geographic Range: Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and Utah

Adult Size: Up to 80 feet (25 m) in length

Adult Weight: Up to 30 tons

Diet: Plants, leaves

Habitat: Lowland floodplains
 

Characteristics: Apatosaurus belongs to a group of dinosaurs called the sauropods. This group of herbivorous (plant-eating) dinosaurs consists of the largest animals that ever lived on land. An animal this size probably needed to eat more than a ton of vegetation a day just to stay alive. The long neck of this dinosaur was probably used to reach leaves high in trees. Notice the hollow spaces in the neck bones that allowed them to be strong, yet kept the neck from being too heavy.

The Morrison Formation in Wyoming has yielded some of the most plentiful and amazing dinosaur discoveries of anywhere in the world to date. This specimen is about 75 feet long and weighed about 25 tons in life. The darker-colored bones are the actual bones from the dinosaur and the lighter-colored bones are fossil casts. The skeleton was excavated from the Morrison Formation at Sheep Creek Quarry in Albany County in 1901 by the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh. Curator S.H. Knight obtained this skeleton for the University of Wyoming in 1956 and built this mount between 1959 and 1961.

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