You know you’re famous when you’ve been dead for millions of years and everyone still knows your name. Just ask the Apatosaurus, which was, at 75 feet snout-to-tail, longer than a city block, and weighed at least 16 metric tons, which is about two African elephants, plus a third of another elephant.

Check out the size on that thing. (Tadek Kurpaski/Wikimedia Commmons)

Sure, they call it a "false lizard" — that’s what the name means — for its size. (You may as well just call me False Liz-ard Lopattosaurus and get it over with. Some scientific research shows that we are fond of things that remind us of our own names, and that is almost certainly the case here.) But it’s also genuinely worthy of consideration: the Apatosaurus was one of the largest animals ever to trod upon this dumb space rock.

In 1909, the skull and full skeleton of an Apatosaurus were found in the Morrison formation in what is now Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument. While the Apatosaurus was one of the first dinosaurs to be mounted by archaeologists, it also has the dubious honor of having had the wrong head attached to its skeleton. Originally, there was a Camarasaurus head — and the proper skull wasn’t mounted until 1979.

What, you think because you’ve been dead for millennia, no one can possibly humiliate you?

What do we know about the Apatosaurus? It lived during the Jurassic period — about 155 million years ago to 150 million years ago — and was probably stockier than its other sauropod relatives, Diplodocus and Barosaurus. Despite the fact that it’s not as long as either, its skeleton is heavier. Its femur, which is the longest bone in the leg, is massive — and took five summers for a field crew to unearth. Once unearthed, the bone was measured at about 6 feet, 7 inches in length. The leg bone, with packaging for sending to the lab, clocked in at 2,800 pounds — and that’s not even the whole leg. Which is to say: Apatosaurus was thick. Its vertebrae even feature air sacs to lighten them slightly.

Artist's rendering. (Wikimedia commons)

Comparatively, its head is tiny. Its chisel-like teeth suggest vegetarianism, and it probably ate plants from the ground, like ferns. In fact, its head is not unlike that of modern mammals called ungulates — a clade that includes horses, rhinos, and pigs. Its long neck was probably used for battle with other members of its species, as well as for browsing for mid-level greenery. What Apatosauruses fought about is lost to us — probably food or mates, though I suppose we can’t rule out the possibility that they also got into brawls over their favorite sports teams.

And since more and more dinosaurs appear to have had feathers, it may be the case Apatosaurus had some, too. That’s just speculation, though. You can imagine it with a feathery crown but given the whole Apatosaurus ethos, I strongly suspect it had weird-looking peach fuzz — the dino equivalent of a teenage boy trying out a mustache.

What have we learned? The Apatosaurus was among the largest creatures ever to live and was routinely underestimated by scientists. (We still don’t know if a Brontosaurus is an Apatosaurus or not.) But Apatosaurus was a good sport in its post-death humiliation. I don’t think I can rate anything that’s been extinct this long higher than a 6 — but it's a sauropod, which is one of the longest-lived dinosaur groups. Sauropods eked out about 100 million years on Earth, which is pretty good given that we humans have only been a going concern for about 200,000 years or so.

Listen, there’s not a lot of dignity in death and it’s coming for us all, both individually and as a species. I can’t guarantee you that no one will mount your bones somewhere with an entirely separate head — that of a gorilla, perhaps? — on top. All I know is this: You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another year older and deeper in debt.