Sometimes, you learn that a bedrock principle of your life is wrong, and it shakes you to your core.

That’s how I felt, as a former dinosaur-loving kid, when I recently discovered there’s no such thing as a Brontosaurus.

Apparently, there’s a whole long story about the Bone Wars, an early paleontology feud between Othniel Charles Marsh (a fellow Yalie!) and Edward Drinker Cope, and mixing up parts of different dinosaurs (an Apatosaurus and a Camarasaurus). The moral of which is, there’s really no such thing as a Brontosaurus at all.

Holy crap.