Owen's interpretation was commonly accepted until well into the twentieth century. By 1970 however, both John Ostrom and Rodney Steel understood that Owen's claim that "C. brevis" in 1842 was still a "nomen nudum" should be rejected as a transparent attempt to change the type specimen, inadmissible by present standards. By those same standards though, Melville's name change was also incorrect: as the name "Cetiosaurus brevis" was still "available" he should simply have made the sauropod bones the lectotype, removing the iguanodontid remains from the syntype series. The sauropod bones, not the iguanodont bones, would then have retained the name "C. brevis". Therefore, "Cetiosaurus conybeari" is a junior objective synonym of "C. brevis", that is, "C. brevis" is not only an older name, but one based on exactly the same fossils as the younger, invalid name.