# Brachiosaurus (Brachiosaurus altithorax) — DinoLand

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### id=4: Brachiosaurus (Brachiosaurus altithorax)

- URL: https://www.dinoland.ai/species.html?lang=en&id=4
- Diet: Herbivore
- Era: Jurassic
- Period: 154–150 million years ago
- Length: 26 m
- Weight: ≈35–56 t
- Height: 12–16 m
- Speed: ≈10 km/h
- Habitat: Humid forests with tall conifers and tree ferns
- Region: North America; Africa (historically referred material)
- Discovered: 1900, Elmer S. Riggs

Fact: “Forelimbs longer than hindlimbs—an ‘up-stretching’ high-browser.”

Description: Brachiosaurus is a towering macronarian sauropod characterized by marked forelimb elongation and a more vertically inclined neck posture compared with diplodocids. This body plan facilitated high browsing in riverine gallery forests, accessing foliage above the reach of many contemporaneous herbivores. Although early popular hypotheses invoked semi-aquatic habits partly because of elevated nasal openings, taphonomic and functional studies now favor a fully terrestrial, column-limb locomotor style with circulatory adaptations for perfusing a greatly elevated head.

Features:
  - Nares shifted dorsally on the skull—once misread as evidence for snorkelling
  - A powerful cardiovascular system must have elevated blood to a head several meters above the heart
  - Among the largest land animals of the Late Jurassic terrestrial tropics

Related genera: Giraffatitan, Supersaurus, Camarasaurus


## Citation

Field Journal — Dinosaur Encyclopedia — https://www.dinoland.ai

Web: https://www.dinoland.ai/species.html?lang=en&id=4
Index: https://www.dinoland.ai/llms-en.txt