Diplodocus Characteristics

Diplodocus is among the most easily identifiable dinosaurs, with its classic sauropod dinosaur shape. Diplodocus measured around 90 feet (27 metres) in length and 30 feet (9.1 metres) in height. A fully grown Diplodocus could attain the length of 175 feet from the end of its snout to the tip of its tail. Its neck measured 26 feet (8 metres) long and was composed of at least 15 elongated vertebrae and it had a tail length of 45 feet (14 metres). Its extremely long tail composed of about 80 caudal vertebrae which is almost double what some other sauropods had in their tails such as the Shunosaurus who had 43 caudal vertebrae in its tail and the Camarasaurus with 53. The middle part of the tail had 'double beams' (oddly shaped bones on the underside, which gave Diplodocus its name). They may have provided support for the vertebrae, or perhaps prevented the blood vessels from being crushed if the animals heavy tail pressed against the ground. These 'double beams' are also seen in some related dinosaurs.

Diplodocus was more lightly built than the other giant sauropods and may have weighed only about 10 - 30 tons. The skull of Diplodocus was very small, compared to the size of the animal, and measured up to 27 - 35 metres (90 - 115 feet). Its nostrils were located at the top of its head. Diplodocus was one of the most gigantic dinosaurs and longest land animals to walk the Earth.

Diplodocus

One of the best known sauropods, Diplodocus was a very large quadrupedal animal. Its front legs were shorter than its back legs, and all had elephant-like, five-toed feet. One toe on each foot had a thumb claw, probably for protection. A fossilized Diplodocus skin impression reveals that it had a row of spines running down its back. For many years Diplodocus was the longest dinosaur known. Its great size may have been a deterrent to predators such as Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus who coexisted with Diplodocus, as their remains have been discovered in the same location.

Diplodocus was herbivorous. Its small teeth were peg-like and blunt and positioned only in the anterior part of the jaws. It must have eaten a tremendous amount of plant material each day to sustain itself. It swallowed leaves whole, without chewing them, and may have swallowed gastroliths (stones that remained in its stomach) to help digest this tough plant material. Its main food was probably conifers, which were the dominant plant when the large sauropods lived. Secondary food sources may have included gingkos, seed ferns, cycads, bennettitaleans, ferns, club mosses and horsetails. These soft-leaved plants lived in wet areas, where sauropods could not venture, but perhaps the sauropod could have stood on firm ground and browsed into wetlands with their very long necks.

Diplodocus may have travelled in herds, migrating when the local food supply was depleted. Diplodocus probably hatched from eggs, like other sauropods. Sauropod eggs have been found in a linear pattern and not in nests, presumably the eggs were laid as the dinosaur was walking. It is thought that sauropods did not take care of their eggs. Sauropod life spans may have been on the order of 100 years or more.

Diplodocus was a sauropod, whose intelligence (as measured by its relative brain to body weight, or EQ) was the among the lowest of the dinosaurs. It used to be thought that the sauropods, like Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Apatosaurus and Stegosaurus had a second brain. Paleontologists now think that what they thought was a second brain was just an enlargement in the spinal cord in the hip area. This enlargement was larger than the dinosaurs tiny brain.

Diplodocus is the longest dinosaur known from a complete skeleton. While dinosaurs such as Seismosaurus (which might be a large Diplodocus) and Supersaurus were probably longer, fossil remains of these animals are only fragmentary.

At first, diplodocids were often portrayed with their necks held high up in the air, allowing them to graze from tall trees, however, it has been determined that Diplodocus (and the other diplodocid saropods, like Apatosaurus), could not hold their necks over 17 feet (5.4 metres) off the ground. Interestingly, the range of movement of the neck would have allowed the head to graze below the level of the body, leading scientists to speculate on whether Diplodocus grazed on submerged water plants, from riverbanks. This concept of the feeding posture is supported by the relative lengths of front and hind limbs.

Diplodocus

Several species of Diplodocus were described between 1878 and 1924. The first skeleton was found at Canon City, Colorado by Benjamin Mudge and Samuel Wendell Williston in 1877, and was named Diplodocus longus ('long double-beam'), by paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878. Diplodocus remains have since been found in the Morrison Formation of the western U.S. States of Colorado, Utah, Montana and Wyoming. Fossils of this animal are common, except for the skull, which is often missing from otherwise complete skeletons. Although not the type species, D. carnegii is the most completely known and most famous due to the large number of casts of its skeleton in museums around the world.