There are more dinosaurs today than there were when I was a kid. A new species is discovered about every six weeks. In the tradition of paleontology, whoever finds the bones for the first time names the new species. This may sound easy, but often, the dinosaur must be named when only a single bone has been found, and the name is only valid if the bone really does not belong to an already known dinosaur and if the name is original.

In 1976, James A Jensen, found a few bones in western Colorado. Jensen named the Ultrasaurus in 1985 (meaning “Ultra lizard”). Only a shoulder blade (scapula), some back bones (vertebrae), and a few ribs were found. Jensen estimated that Ultrasaurus was 54 feet tall and 100 feet long.

In 1991, another paleontologist, George Olshevsky, discovered that Jensen had accidentally mixed the bones of two different dinosaurs! Most of the bones belonged to a Brachiosaurus, but the shoulder blade belonged to an entirely different kind of dinosaur. Since the shoulder blade was the part that made this dinosaur unique, the name Ultrasaurus (and the records that went with it) belonged with the shoulder blade. The rest of the bones were determined to be from a new, very large species of Brachiosaurus, which is now called Brachiosaurus altithorax.

Dinosaurs and Memory

There are a few people who remember when I came up with the name of this site. My then four-year-old son was very into dinosaurs and I became an armchair paleontologist. I was amazed that the number of dinosaurs which can now be named by the average pre-schooler far surpasses the species that can be identified by the average adult.

I was intrigued by the stories and mishaps generated by arcane scientific logistics. The famed brontosaurus turns out to be an imaginary creature. It was actually an apatosaurus with the head of a camarasaurus. The ultrasaurus, thought to be the largest dinosaur, might not really be very large. It’s all history and personality. It struck me as very similar to the definition of Internet protocols.

So this dinosaur that I learned about through the inquisitive nature of a small boy became my website’s namesake.