Alt Text: Dinosaurs With Dumb Names Are a Pox on Paleontology
- 6:30 am |
In zoology, whoever discovers a new species gets to name it. Normally this isn’t a big deal; at this point, the only living animal species being discovered are either some isolated sea slug or some type of antelope that everyone thought was the same as another type of antelope, but it turns out they can’t interbreed so — two different antelopes. In the latter case, everyone’s just going to keep calling it “an antelope” and in the former case, who cares?
However, there is one situation where animals are being given names that people are actually going to use, and that’s dinosaurs. Paleontologists have an awesome responsibility, as well as an awesome job. Whatever they name their long-extinct terrible lizards, that’s the name, and there’s a decent chance it’s going to show up on film or as a stuffed animal in a museum gift shop.
Some dinosaur names are ideal. Tyrannosaurus rex, for instance, is objectively the best name that anything has ever had, with Wolf Blitzer coming in a distant second. And there’s the Triceratops, which sounds cool and means “three-horned face,” and also Pentaceratops, which is, OK, kind of derivative, but I’m still hoping they eventually discover a Hexaceratops.
Sadly, however, not all scientists are equally inspired. Here are a few dinosaurs that, international rules for nomenclature be damned, need new names.
As arguably the largest bipedal dinosaur, Spinosaurus should have had a much better name. First off, it looks like it might be pronounced “spin-o-saurus,” which sounds like playground equipment. Secondly, it doesn’t sound Latin enough. I mean, it is Latin, but it doesn’t sound Latin. It sounds like it belongs with Neckosaurus and Littletinyarmsosaurus in the Museum of Unimaginative Nomenclature.
Speaking of phoning it in, a disturbing number of dinosaurs are named after the place where they were found, which speaks to me of a paleontologist who has lost all joie de vivre. This leads to names like Utahraptor, Denversaurus and the worst of all, Albertosaurus, a species discovered in Alberta, Canada. Szechuanosaurus, however, sounds delicious.
Dinosaur names should not include the word “guano.” End of story.
The Bruhathkayosaurus was possibly the largest vertebrate ever to walk upon the earth, and the name sounds like a two-pack-a-day smoker getting up in the morning. And the name means “huge-bodied lizard,” which is accurate but boring. Surely there’s still some room for poetry in dinosaur naming — what about “mountain-shaming lizard” or “sun-blocking lizard”? I don’t know the Latin for those, but I assume they’re less phlegmy.
Sometimes poetry can go awry. While the name of this raptor-like dinosaur is cool in theory — it means “Achilles’ warrior” — in practice, Achillobator sounds like a very specific form of ankle fetish.
Sweet bottle of bourbon, this is terrible. Giraffatitan means “giant giraffe,” to begin with. But this creature was not a giraffe, it was a dinosaur. Calling a dinosaur a giant giraffe is like calling the Colossus of Rhodes a giant Hummel figurine. And “giraffatitan” is a terrible name, not only for a dinosaur, but for anything. It would be a terrible name for a giant giraffe. It would be a terrible name for a ska band. And as we all know, you can call a ska band any damn thing.
I was expecting to find that the “gas” in this dinosaur’s name was a coincidence, that the name meant, I dunno, “gazing lizard” or suchlike. But no, it’s named Gasosaurus after the Chinese gasoline company that discovered it. Someone needs to explain to Chinese paleontologists that science teachers have a hard enough time explaining Uranus and titmice to first graders without introducing a Gasosaurus into the educational mix.
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Born helpless, naked and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg overcame these handicaps to become a theropod, a therapist and a thermostat.