Easy. Breezy. Beautiful. Brachiosaurus.

Easy. Breezy. Beautiful. Brachiosaurus.

Steven Spielberg did well in using this iconic giant to make the first full appearance of a dinosaur in Jurassic Park one of the most memorable scenes in cinema. It might no longer count as the largest dinosaur ever found, but its distinctive profile and still impressive size never fail to impress. Stand next to the Brachiosaurus sculpture in our park and you’ll see what I mean. As arresting as this animal can be physically, the science and stories behind it prove just as fascinating:

Riggs, E. S. (1903). ART. XXX.–Brachiosaurus altithorax, the largest known Dinosaur. American

Journal of Science (1880-1910), 15(88), 299.

Jensen, James A. (1987). “New brachiosaur material from the Late Jurassic of Utah and Colorado,”

Great Basin Naturalist: Vol. 47 : No. 4 , Article 19.

Carpenter, K., & Tidwell, V. (1998). Preliminary description of a Brachiosaurus skull from Felch quarry

1, Garden Park, Colorado. Modern Geology, 23, 69-84.

Mallison, H. (2011). “Rearing giants: kinetic-dynamic modeling of sauropod bipedal and tripodal

poses,” Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: Understanding the life of giants, 237-250.