apatosaurus

Everyday

An apatosaurus was a huge plant-eating dinosaur with a very long neck and long tail, which lived in North America about 150 million years ago. tree →

In the lessons

Used in science and dinosaur lessons, museums and story books. It was for a long time known as «brontosaurus»; scientists now treat Brontosaurus as a separate but close relative.

Examples

• The apatosaurus was as long as two buses. tree →
• Apatosaurus ate leaves from tall trees and low plants. tree →
• We saw an apatosaurus skeleton at the museum. tree →
• Apatosaurus lived in the Jurassic period. tree →
• Its long tail may have cracked like a whip. tree →
• An apatosaurus weighed as much as several elephants. tree →

Note

Pronounced a-PAT-oh-SOR-us. Name means «deceptive lizard». As a scientific genus name it starts with a capital and is often in italics: Apatosaurus. Myth: the old idea that it lived in water to hold up its weight is wrong; it lived on land. Dinosaurs died out long before humans lived.