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True to Life?

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Species: grandis, lentus, supremis
Range: Late Jurassic (Tithonian, 150-145 MYA) from Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, Montana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, possibly Germany, Portugal, Russia, and Zimbabwe
Size estimate: 50-75 ft length, 40-50 tons
Discovery: Edward Drinker Cope, 1877
Classification: dinosauria, saurischia, sauropoda, macronaria, camarasauridae

True to Life?

Since no one has ever seen a living dinosaur, and the missing pieces of the fossil record withhold important clues to their appearance, no artistic representation of a dinosaur ever gets it 100% right. On top of that, new discoveries can change our ideas of extinct creatures drastically. So, how close does this sculpture come to what we know of the original animal?

• As the main sign states, at one time, scientists considered Camarasaurus an unusually small sauropod, which the size of this statue reflects. Some species of sauropod legitimately adopted small adult sizes—the Magyarasaurus featured on the Lost Trail west of here reflects this—but not Camarasaurus. A big Camarasaurus supremus measured only 10 feet less than Brachiosaurus, though it would not reach as impressive a height at the shoulder, naturally. For whatever reason, Camarasaurus seems to have died young fairly frequently, skewing the sample for estimating size.
• The overall shape of this statue’s head does not quite fit the Camarasaurus mold. Viewed from the front, it tapers toward the top when it really had a boxier build than that. It matches the skull better in profile, though.
• Lips have proven a controversial topic in dinosaur paleontology of late, though few scientists have devoted in-depth studies on the question. A few papers on sauropods speculate they had a beak-like margin to their jaws, but they don’t provide much evidence to support the idea. Others contend that we should assume all dinosaurs had lips because many other tetrapods—generally land-living bony animals with legs—have them, but they likewise generally offer little evidence directly related to dinosaurs in support and tend to ignore dinosaurs known to have full or partial beaks. One Camarasaurus specimen preserves some intriguing fossil evidence of soft tissue around the mouth, which covered some of the teeth at least partway, but since it’s a small scrap, scientists remain unsure at this point how exactly to interpret it. Where some see a beak, others see toughened gums. As a result, we have no idea if the lizard lips on this sculpture match the living animal. It’s not implausible for it to have them.
• This sculpture’s eyes are probably proportionately too small. Like birds, crocodiles, and other reptiles, dinosaurs grew a bony ring around their eyes. Though this ocular ring rarely preserves well, it is known for Camarasaurus and shows a proportionately bigger eye than this sculpture does. The size of some sauropods’ eyes has led some scientists to suggest they adopted a cathemeral habit: they were most active during the dawn and dusk hours. For an herbivore so large that it might have a hard time dissipating its own body heat, such a habit makes good sense.
• Where are its ears?!
• Perhaps surprisingly, considering this is one of the older sculptures in the Park, this Camarasaurus gets its nostrils more or less in the right place: at the lower, forward end of the bony nostril. Many depictions give it an almost whale-like blowhole, but this breaks with a solid pattern among bony animals.
• Unlike most of the sauropods in the Park, this sculpture’s skin almost has a proper scaly texture. It’s bumpy enough, though true scales have definite edges. This sculpture also avoids the saggy, elephant-like skin many of the other sauropod sculptures sport—its skin tends to wrinkle in more sensible places. It’s not a great representation, but it’s better than some takes on it.
• Color-wise, we lack any information specific to Camarasaurus. A 2023 study found evidence of skin pigmentation in its distant cousin and contemporary, Diplodocus, which supports a tan or brown color scheme, so the tan on this sculpture is probably plausible, but that’s not saying much.
• The biggest downside of this sculpture is its terrible posture. The first drawings of its skeleton gave it the arched back and draggy tail that have influenced so much Camarasaurus art, but it would painfully dislocate the bones to shoehorn the skeleton into such a pose. Living Camarasaurus had a mostly flat back and held its tail parallel to the ground most of the time, though it might have used its tail as a prop if it reared on its hind legs.
• Behind the Scenes—some of the Park’s sculptures, like this Camarasaurus, lack proper feet. In most of these cases, the feet were left off due to how the sculpture was intended for display. The idea is that if the feet won’t be visible from any angle, or if they would get in the way of a solid installation, the artist would leave them off. This sculpture was probably supposed to be displayed in tall grass, rendering the toes a moot point. The current pumice substrate now makes it look like it’s wading through some sort of stony ball pit.oming soon!