Size Gets Views

Popularity has been gauged a number of ways on this blog but the number one reason for popularity of any dinosaur usually comes down to its size. We have had a few middle of the road taxa that are not popular because of their size, but this is generally an exception to the idea that size, when it comes to dinosaurs, truly matters. Some dinosaurs make it into movies and documentaries because they are small and others because they are larger than anything else we can imagine. Apatosaurus fits into the second category: being enormous. The immense size and popularity of this dinosaur has led to its inclusion in countless documentaries and movies. The entire dinosaur is not always treated equally, however. The tail of Apatosaurus has reached enough popularity as a research project that at times it has outshone the rest of the dinosaur. Most recently Apatosaurus has been famously killed onscreen in Jurassic World. There are many videos showing the behind the scenes making of the dinosaurs, a movie that does still employ physical models in an age where dinosaurs of that immense size are often portrayed in only digital means. Anyone that was taking note of the dinosaurs in the park may have noticed that Apatosaurus took the reigns of giant sauropod from Brachiosaurus for the first time in the movies. The latest popular news about sauropods (reconstituting Brontosaurus as a separate species from Apatosaurus) may have led to this new sauropod king of the Jurassic series. Regardless, the sadness of the scenes in which Apatosaurus appears in Jurassic World is awful; however, its inclusion in the movie with another prominent sauropods says a great deal about its current popularity on the silver screen.