Diplodocus

A body built for length

Diplodocus was one of the longest dinosaurs known, stretching about 26 meters, or roughly 85 feet, from its small head to the tip of its whip-like tail. It may have weighed around 13,000 kilograms, but most of its length was neck and tail rather than body. Its skull was long and low, with peg-shaped teeth at the front for stripping leaves off branches, and its nostrils sat high on its head. Despite its size, its bones were lightly built, with air spaces that kept the skeleton lighter than it looks.

Its world

Diplodocus lived during the Late Jurassic, between about 155 and 143 million years ago, across what is now Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma, Montana, and New Mexico. It is known from 62 separate fossil finds, most of them from the Morrison Formation, one of the richest fossil beds from this period. Diplodocus shared its world with fellow sauropods Brontosaurus, Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Camarasaurus, the armored Stegosaurus, and predators such as Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Torvosaurus.

How it was found

Marsh named Diplodocus in 1878, taking the name from the double-beamed chevron bones under its tail. The type species is Diplodocus longus. With dozens of fossil finds to work from, Diplodocus is among the best-studied sauropods known today.