Diplodocus carnegii dih-PLOD-oh-kus
"Double beam"
You 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall
Diplodocus 26 m (85 ft) long
15 people holding hands
- Length
- 26 m (85 ft) — About 26 m long, ~15 tonnes — one of the longest dinosaurs known.
- Period
- Late Jurassic (155–145 Mya)
- Place
- North America · Western United States
- Food
- Herbivore — Low-growing plants, ferns, and possibly conifer needles raked off branches.
Diplodocus was a sauropod built like a 26-meter-long suspension bridge. Its neck and tail balanced on hips supported by pillar-like legs, the whole structure held off the ground by tension between front and back. The tail ended in a thin whip — possibly used to make sonic booms to scare off predators, though this is debated.
What we know
- Longest neck-to-tail of any well-known dinosaur — about 26 m end to end.
- Skull was small relative to body, with peg-shaped teeth at the front only.
- Tail had over 80 vertebrae, ending in a thin whip-like tip.
- Lived in the Morrison Formation alongside Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus.
What we guess
- How the neck was held — long debate between high-browsing and low-sweeping postures.
- Whether the whip tail could break the sound barrier (one paper says yes; many skeptical).
- How it gathered enough food to feed its enormous body — chewing was minimal, gut fermentation key.