The Marx Brontosaurus started life as the Brontosaurus (a) variant, made as one of the three figures of the "large" mold group. Brontosaurus (a) was made until about 1961. He most often appeared in gray or light green, although sometimes was found in Play Sets in metallic green or metallic silver. I don't believe he ever appeared in brown or tan. (The specimen pictured above has been painted and so is not sporting his original factory color.) There are reports that Brontosaurus (a) has been seen in marbled gray and in an unusual light brown, but I can't verify those. He was not reissued in the early 1970s. However .... Brontosaurus (b) is almost identical to his forerunner B. (a). This second one was part of the "revised" mold group, and was manufactured from about 1961 until original production ceased in 1964. He was reissued by Marx in the 1970s. The differences between the (a) and (b) variants are trivial. Being in production at slightly different times, figures of the two mold groups were made in (sometimes) different colors. B. (a) is usually seen in gray, followed by light green. Rarer colors are metallic silver, metallic green, a very light brown, and marbled. B. (b) can be found in gray, light green, and brown. Marble is much rarer, as is metallic green. There are rumors of specimens in tan. To casual inspection, it appears that the molds for both B. (a) and (b) were 2-segment types. However, both figures were made in three-segment molds - the bottoms of the feet were formed by the third segments. The differences between the two molds were very small. Here they are -
The mold marks on the bottom of all four feet are large circles on B. (a) and small circles on B. (b). And the markings - BRONTOSAURUS and 70' LONG - are in a slightly larger font and located a bit lower down on (a). That's it - the two variants are distinguishable only by (sometimes) color, the mold circles on the feet, and the exact location of the printing. The Marx Brontosaurus is a good figure, although the tail position is a bit odd. It's not quite an old-style dragger, but it isn't really held in the tail-high position favored in modern reconstructions. Knockoffs are common. So, what's with this guy Apatasaurus, and just whose head is it, anyhow? The order Sauropoda was defined, more or less, by Othniel Charles Marsh in two papers, Principle characters of American Jurassic dinosaurs (1878) and Additional characteristics of the Sauropods (1879). At that time Marsh and his rival Edward Drinker Cope were sending trainloads of excavated fossil bones back East, and, it seems, naming and describing these fragmentary skeletal remains as fast as they could write. The resulting mess is still being sorted out today. Below are those particularly relevant to the Apatosaurus - Brontosaurus schism -
And what does all that mean? Rows 1 and 2 show that in 1877 Marsh described two species of sauropod, both of which he assigned to the same genus. This genus he named Apatasaurus. Row 2 also shows that at some subsequent date someone made a fairly convincing argument that the animal Marsh named A. grandis might more sensibly be included in the genus Camarasaurus. Hence the change of name from A. grandis to C. grandis. Note that this is a much bigger deal than it at first might appear. The genus Camarasaurus is in the family Camarasauridae Cope (1877), but Apatosaurus is in the family Diplodocidae Marsh (1884), so it was a relatively large move, not just a generic sidestep .... and, even worse, note that the genus Camarasaurus was described by Marsh's bitter rival Cope. (The same thing happened to Morosaurus, another Marsh sauropod genus. Marsh's 1879 paper (cited above) contained the first description of a sauropod skull, albeit only a partial specimen. But the genus Morosaurus has since been reclassified as identical to Camarasaurus, so it now belongs to Cope. One can almost hear a thin spectral voice in the wind, wailing "damn!" .... ).In row 3, a specimen Marsh assigned to a new genus, Atlantasaurus, has later been determined to be pretty much the same creature as Apatasaurus ajax. Row 4 is a specimen to which Marsh assigned a new specific name, but he put it in a genus he had named two years previously, Apatasaurus. Subsequent rearrangement has left it in that genus but decided that the species distinction wasn't legitimate and that it's the same creature as Apatosaurus ajax. Finally, in row 5 ... Brontosaurus. In 1879 Marsh described a specimen which he believed to be a relic of an animal of a new genus and species. He named it Brontosaurus excelsus. Subsequent work has shown it to most probably belong to the genus Apatasaurus, which Marsh had identified in 1879 in his description of Apatosaurus ajax. However it is not of the same species, so this specimen can't just be considered another relic of Apatosaurus ajax. Therefore, Marsh's specific name is retained but the genus changed to Apatosaurus. Voilà - the name Brontosaurus disappears. A minor complication, easily handled, appears in row 6. Marsh's Brontosaurus amplus, on further examination, appears to be the same species as his B. excelsus. B. amplus should then be assigned to B. excelsus (that is, the specimen, the actual fossil examined and described by Marsh, becomes another specimen of B. excelsus, rather than the first specimen of B. amplus). But Brontosaurus excelsus has been changed to Apatosaurus excelsus. Nyet problema, B. amplus is simply assigned to A. excelsus. The name Brontosaurus remains redundant. In row 7 is another fossil described and classified some 20 years later by O.A. Peterson and C.W. Gilmore. This has subsequently been determined to be mighty close to Apatasaurus excelsus, and it is so assigned. Things don't always move around. In row 8 is a specimen originally described by W.J. Holland as a species of Apatasaurus, and it still is. Row 9 is a species described from very scanty remains - a sacrum and pelvis. Exactly where this animal should go isn't clear, but its early classification as an Apatasaurus species seems to be 'way off. In row 10 we see that old Camarasaurus - Apatasaurus thing crop up again, this time in a new species described in 1957. Will the excitement never stop? So why is it so hard to assign these things properly? Because the specimens are fragmentary, and/or disarticulated (that is, the bones are found scattered about or piled up in a lump, not lying where they should be in relation to each other). The first description of an articulated sauropod limb was published in 1902 (J.B. Hatcher, Structure of the forelimb and manus of Brontosaurus). The first nearly-complete and articulated sauropod skeleton wasn't described until 1925 (C.W. Gilmore, A nearly complete articulated skeleton of Camarasaurus, a saurischian dinosaur from the Dinosaur National Monument). Camarasaurus had first been described by Cope forty-eight years earlier. That's a long time to wait for a good specimen. We're all still waiting for good specimens of most of these animals. And this brings us to the embarrassment of That Head. The gigantic sauropods appeared in the lower Jurassic and persisted right to the bitter end, the close of the Cretaceous. During this vast inverval of nearly 150 million years, the basic sauropod design diversified widely. Since 1841, when Owen described Cetiosaurus from a few fragmentary vertebrae, some 90 genera and 150 species have been introduced. The vast majority of these are based on inadequate remains. Over a dozen are known only from a few teeth, half a dozen are based solely on single bones. Hardly more than a dozen are known from reasonably complete skeletal remains, including skulls and jaws. Apatosaurus, although well-known in the sense that everyone and his uncle has heard of Apatosaurus or Brontosaurus, is not represented by particularly outstanding specimens. Apatosaurus ajax is known from two partial skeletons and a braincase. Apatosaurus excelsus is known from six partial skeletons and hundreds of postcranial fragments, but no skulls. Apatosaurus louisae Holland (1915) is known from two skeletons, one partial skeleton, and an almost-complete skull. That's about it. Even so, Apatosaurus is probably represented by the best sauropod fossil material after Camarasaurus and Diplodocus. The first sauropod skeleton ever put on permanent display was an Apatosaurus set up circa 1905 at the American Museum of Natural History. The display was based on a specimen found in a quarry near Como Bluff and the Bone Cabin Quarry in Wyoming. The find consisted of approximately half a skeleton, without a skull or mandible. As displayed, the missing parts have been reconstructed (which means, well, ah, faked). The reconstructed skull was modeled after the skull and mandible of Camarasaurus. The only Apatasaurus skull known to date was found in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, and that site wasn't discovered until 1909 (by an expedition from the Carnegie Museum), and so was too late to do anyone working on the 1905 exhibit any good. Before the discovery of an Apatosaurus skull, it apparently seemed reasonable to guess that it would look much like a Camarasaurus skull. Camarasaurus, though a large animal, tended to be slightly smaller than Apatosaurus, with a proportionately shorter neck and shorter hind limbs. And, as we now know, with a radically different head. |
