Description
Apatosaurus was a sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Late Jurassic Period (about 152 million years ago) in what is now western North America. It was a large animal, being at least 70 feet in length, ad weighted about 20 tons, but some old adults were probably a lot bigger.
- Scientific Name: Apatosaurus
- Characteristics: Apatosaurus was a large quadrupedal dinosaur with a long neck and whip-like tail. Like most sauropods, it had a stout body, and its front legs were slightly shorter than its back legs. It was once thought that large sauropods like Apatosaurus would have been too heavy to have supported themselves on land, so were forced to float themselves in water. We now have fossil footprints that show that this is incorrect – they walked on land, although not very quickly, with top speeds of less than 20 miles per hour.
- Size and Color: This model is 13 inches long and 5 inches high. It is medium gray on top and a light cream underneath. Such coloring would not have camouflaged the Apatosaurus very well, but this isn’t that important for such a large animal.
