Elmer S. Riggs Riggs' assistant, H. William Menke, found the first known skeleton of the giant sauropod dinosaur "Brachiosaurus altithorax" from near Grand Junction, Colorado. At the end of the 1900 field season Riggs' found a specimen of "Apatosaurus" near Fruita, a few miles from the Brachiosaurus site. This specimen was excavated during the 1901 field season, and was put on display in 1908 at the Field Museum. From these specimens he named "Brachiosaurus" and Brachiosauridae, and presented evidence that "Apatosaurus" and "Brontosaurus" were the same genus of dinosaur. He also proposed that sauropods were terrestrial animals, based on their limb structure, but
Apatosaurus have a close counterpart"Brachiosaurus" and "Lusotitan", "Camptosaurus" and "Draconyx", and "Apatosaurus" and "Dinheirosaurus". Other vertebrates that are known to have shared this paleo-environment include ray-finned fishes, frogs, salamanders, turtles, sphenodonts, lizards, terrestrial and aquatic crocodylomorphans, and several species of pterosaur. Shells of bivalves and aquatic snails are also common. The flora of the period has been evidenced in fossils of green algae, fungi, mosses, horsetails, cycads, ginkgoes, and several families of conifers. Vegetation varied from river-lining forests of tree ferns with fern understory (gallery forests), to fern savannas with occasional trees such as the "Araucaria"-like conifer "Brachyphyllum". Apatosaurus Apatosaurus (;