One of many diplodocid sauropods of the Morrison Formation (with other genera including Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and Suuwassea amongst others), Dystrophaeus has been the source of a lot of confusion. Edward Drinker Cope, the person who first named Dystrophaeus, thought that the animal belong in the much earlier Triassic period, while Othniel Charles Marsh regarded it as a stegosaur. Away from the ‘Bone Wars’, and another famous palaeontologist, Friedrich von Huene thought that it was a herbivorous theropod, before realising that it was actually a sauropod, but again missed the mark by saying that it was similar to Cetiosaurus. Alfred Romer, another famous for his work in the field of palaeontology considered Dystrophaeus to be a brachiosaurid sauropod, before David Gillette came to the most recent analysis that Dystrophaeus was a diplodocid sauropod. To top all that off, there is uncertainty over the exact time placement for Dystrophaeus within the late Jurassic, while some have suggested that the fossils of Dystrophaeus are too indeterminate too classify a distinct genus, and therefore Dystrophaeus should be regarded as a Nomen dubium.
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