What Happened to Brontosaurus?

Not long ago, when I saw my five-year-old son playing with a model of a dinosaur that looked like a Brontosaurus, I was very surprised to hear him call it Supersaurus, or Giganotosaurus. My son—like most boys an authority on dinosaurs—did not know anything about Brontosaurus!

So, what happened to Brontosaurus?

Brontosaurus was named by Othniel Charles Marsh, who discovered its skeleton in New Jersey in 1877.  The name Brontosaurus means “Thunder Lizard”—a name given because the dinosaur looks more or less like an enormous lizard, about 43 feet long and weighing about 10 tons.  The skeleton was the largest dinosaur ever discovered at the time, and was almost complete, lacking only a skull, feet, and complete tail.  To compensate for what was missing, Marsh found another dinosaur skull and put it on the skeleton as he thought it should look.  He then published his “discovery” to the scientific community.  The scientific hoax lasted more than 100 years before it was completely discredited.

Until it was discredited, Brontosaurus was one of the most popular dinosaurs.  It was found on postage stamps as late as 1989, and was depicted in numerous Hollywood movies.  It was one of the most recognizable dinosaurs for many decades, but it never really existed!  Brontosaurus was a big lie pushed on mankind by the scientific community.

By the 1980s, the scientific community had figured out not only that Brontosaurus was not a real species, but also that with the correct head on it was identical to the Apatosaurus!  Brontosaurus has slowly been removed from scientific textbooks ever since.  The scientific community that “created” Brontosaurus has now rendered it extinct!

Many people today take modern science as infallible, but scientific truth is often not so clear. Evolutionists have been digging up bones and making up hoaxes for more than a century.  There was the Piltdown Man hoax, where fragments of a jawbone and skull of a man, an orangutan and a chimpanzee were mixed together to form a new “human” species with a brain two-thirds the size modern man.   Then there was Orce Man, which was found in 1982 and claimed to be the oldest human skull fragments ever, but turned out to be just skull fragments from a donkey.  Some scientists are so eager to prove evolution that they are willing to take a skull fragment of only a few square inches, or a part of a jaw bone, and attempt to create a whole new species from it.  One evolution hoax after another has been proved false, but the theory behind the hoaxes still stands.  Evolutionists are desperate to find the missing links that they hope will prove the theory of evolution, but they never will. 

On what do you base your beliefs? Do you rely on what people say, or do you look to facts? Secularists have for centuries tried to discredit the Bible, yet as more facts come to light they invariably support the historical accuracy of Scripture. There is no “missing link” waiting to be discovered in order to prove the Bible true. The authenticity and accuracy of the Bible have stood the test of time. To learn more about this unique book, read our informative booklet, The Bible: Fact or Fiction? or watch our telecast, “Can You Trust the Bible?”