THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS SPECIES:

The brontosaurus--the gentle giant that ate plants and sneezed on children--has spent the past century-plus as, if not an actual genus, then a cultural one. Tyrannosaurus, stegosaurus, triceratops ... and brontosaurus. The sauropod was like the fourth Beatle, only more beloved. Sure, the long-necked lizard might not have technically existed; in another sense, though, the brontosaurus was more real in the human imagination than the apatosaurus ever was.

So it was big news, this week, when a new paper brought some redemption--for brontosaurus fans, for Lynnaean taxonomy, for the U.S. Postal Service. A team of scientists, cross-referencing the digital scans of bones from hundreds of long-necked dinosaurs, is claiming that the brontosaurus deserves to be reinstated as a genus unto itself.

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