Diplodocus is one of the most famous long-necked dinosaurs. At over 88 ft long from the tip of its snout to the end of its whip-like tail, Diplodocus is as long as three buses. This ground-shaking plant eater occupied North America during the Late Jurassic, about 153 million years ago.
History
This well-known, long-necked dinosaur was named in 1878. Many Diplodocus skeletons are known from the Jurassic deposits of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Some early reconstructions wrongly portrayed Diplodocus in a sprawling posture, but this would have required a trench in the ground to accommodate its deep chest. Other researchers suggested it was amphibious and spent its life in the water to support its great weight. In reality, Diplodocus stood tall on straight, pillar-like legs and was fully terrestrial.
The industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who funded many early dinosaur excavations and to whom the species D. carnegii refers, donated casts of his namesake to museums around the world. These replicas were taken from an original Diplodocus skeleton in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, and ended up in Europe, Russia, Argentina and Mexico.