Brachiosaurus Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓Brachiosaurus had front legs longer than its back legs, the opposite of almost every other dinosaur: this giraffe-like slope let it browse treetops up to 9 meters (30 feet) off the ground, higher than any ground-based competitor could reach.
• ✓The original Brachiosaurus fossil found by Elmer Riggs in 1900 came from an animal that was not yet fully grown, meaning true adult Brachiosaurus may have been even heavier than the already staggering estimates scientists use today.
• ✓For decades, the famous mounted skeleton at the Humboldt Museum in Berlin was labeled Brachiosaurus, but in 2009, paleontologist Michael Taylor proved those African bones were a completely different dinosaur now named Giraffatitan brancai: true Brachiosaurus is only known from North America.
• ✓Brachiosaurus had its nostrils positioned high on its skull rather than at the front of its snout, and scientists once believed this meant it lived underwater and breathed through the crest like a snorkel: we now know it was a fully land-based animal.
• ✓Brachiosaurus lived roughly 80 million years before T. rex ever evolved, meaning these two famous dinosaurs never met: in fact, more time separates Brachiosaurus from T. rex than separates T. rex from us today.