Explore dinosaurs.im
Diplodocusdinosaurs.im

Home · The animal

The animal

A sauropod with a comb of teeth and a double-beamed tail

The outline is familiar: a small head, a very long neck, four pillar-like legs, and a tail that goes on for most of the length.

The same directory lists the type of dinosaur as a sauropod. [NHM Directory] The directory lists the diet as herbivorous. [NHM Directory] The Natural History Museum’s Dino Directory gives the name meaning as ‘double beam’. [NHM Directory] The directory says it is found in the USA. [NHM Directory]

A high-angle photograph of a Diplodocus skeleton in a museum, looking along the back and tail among ferns, with a sliver of white in one corner of the frame
A high view of the same Carnegie mount, photographed on 25 July 2010, showing the vertebral column, pelvis and the long tail. The white corner at lower left is in the original photograph.James St. John · CC BY 2.0

On the directory, Diplodocus lived in the Late Jurassic, 152–145 million years ago. [NHM Directory] Skeletons of this dinosaur are found in the Morrison Formation in North America. [NHM Dippy] The Dippy page places the animal in the Late Jurassic, 155-145 million years ago. [NHM Dippy]

Four ways to date the same period

On the directory, Diplodocus lived in the Late Jurassic, 152–145 million years ago. [NHM Directory] The Museum’s life of Dippy says the species lived sometime between 156 and 145 million years ago. [NHM] The Dippy page places the animal in the Late Jurassic, 155-145 million years ago. [NHM Dippy] Encyclopaedia Britannica places Diplodocus in the Late Jurassic Period, 161 million to 146 million years ago. [Britannica]

All four sources place Diplodocus in the Late Jurassic. The years they print are not identical. The length-and-scale desk keeps them together rather than choosing one quietly.

Britannica describes the skull as unusually small and rather light, elongate like that of a horse, sitting atop a very long neck. [Britannica] The name refers to double-beamed chevron bones under the tail. [NHM Dippy]

A close-up of large tail vertebrae hanging in a museum hall, with paired chevron bones projecting beneath them and two visitors on a balcony behind
Caudal vertebrae of Dippy at the Natural History Museum, London, showing the double-beamed chevron bones under the tail that the genus name refers to. Photographed by Ballista. Hintze Hall’s architecture is visible behind the tail.Ballista · CC BY-SA 3.0

The same article says the tail was very long and probably extremely flexible, and that it may have functioned as a defensive weapon, or as a prop for the hindlimbs. [Britannica]

Britannica is careful with that tail: it may have been a defensive weapon, or a prop for rearing. Those are published suggestions, not a film still.

Sources on this page