What does "apatosaur" mean?

A large, herbivorous, gregarious sauropod dinosaur, of the genus Apatosaurus, from Jurassic North America; it had a long neck and tail.

Apatosaur

Common synonyms include: brontosaur, brontosaurus, apatosaurus, apatosaurus excelsus, brontosaurus, thunder lizard.

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A large, herbivorous, gregarious sauropod dinosaur, of the genus Apatosaurus, from Jurassic North America; it had a long neck and tail.
2
huge quadrupedal herbivorous dinosaur common in North America in the late Jurassic wordnet

From scientific Latin Apatosaurus (genus name).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.