Dinosaur fossils & 3D skeletons › Brontosaurus
Brontosaurus Fossil & 3D Skeleton
Brontosaurus excelsus
- Age
- Jurassic, about 148.9 million years ago
- Found in
- United States
- Length
- 23.3 m
- Height
- 4.9 m
- Group
- Diplodocid relatives
How this 3D skeleton was made
This 3D model is a reconstruction. Most bone shapes (185 of 315) are borrowed from close relatives and fitted to this species' size and body proportions. The bone shapes are not the actual shapes of this species' fossils. 130 are estimated.
From this species 0Borrowed from relatives 185Estimated 130
Bones known from fossils
283 of 315 bones are known from fossils. 32 are missing and filled in.
Known 283Filled in 32No record 0
Tap a bone on the 3D page to see where each bone shape came from.
Sources
- 3D skeleton: Borrowed bone shapes from the template 'Galeamopus' (S3). Because this species lacks measured body part lengths, its size was determined from the 1830 mm femur in Riggs 1903 dimensions (specimen (no record)) available on PBDB (Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0), keeping the proportions of other body parts from the template. The shapes of individual bones are not from this species, but from the template species. Source of template skeleton: 3D skeleton: Created on this site. Bone shapes were traced from outlines of fossil photographs (lateral and anterior views, etc.) of holotype SMA 0011, and sizes were scaled to the dimension tables and figure scales in the same paper (Tschopp & Mateus 2017 PeerJ, CC BY 4.0). This specimen completely lacks a tail, and part of the dorsal vertebrae is missing. Tail length and dorsal length were taken from records of its relative Diplodocus (Hatcher 1901, copyright Posture (2026-09-30): Approximate angles visually read from Sellers et al. 2013 PLOS ONE (CC BY) Fig. 10 (gait cycle frames calculated for Argentinosaurus, 0.000 s) (hindlimb: front leg femur 18° forward, shin 24° backward; back leg femur 6° backward, shin 39° backward / forelimb: planted foot humerus 33° backward, forearm 28° forward; lifted swinging foot humerus 39° backward, forearm 3° backward). Orientations of insteps and hands are estimated. All sauropods were assigned this walking style (no individual calculation per species exists). Bone orientations were taken not from a walking diagram of this species itself, but from a relative with the same walking style. The neck was turned slightly to the side, and the tail was curved sideways (magnitude of angle is estimated; the figure is side view only).
- Discovered Bones: Sauropodomorph bone table from Cashmore et al. (2020) (the maximum value per bone from scores across 5 specimens [preserved ratio 0–1]). Any bone with even a partial remnant was colored as 'discovered'. Since vertebrae are scored by section—neck, back, hips, and tail—all bones in the same section share the same color.
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