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Re: [dinosaur] Murusraptor, New Megaraptoran Theropod from Late Cretaceous of Argentina (free pdf)



Perhaps they wished to avoid any misconceptions that the name meant "murid thief," which would be my first guess for anything named "Muriraptor."


Sent from Outlook


From: dinosaur-l-request@usc.edu <dinosaur-l-request@usc.edu> on behalf of Ben Creisler <bcreisler@gmail.com>
Sent: July 20, 2016 2:40:18 PM
To: Thomas Holtz; dinosaur-l@usc.edu
Subject: Re: [dinosaur] Murusraptor, New Megaraptoran Theropod from Late Cretaceous of Argentina (free pdf)
 

Ben Creisler
bcreisler@gmail.com

I guess the  name Murusraptor would fall into the category of "false compounds" or "syntactic compounds" in which two distinct words are arbitrarily combined as one word, and in some cases the parts could be treated as separate elements for grammar purposes. Examples in Latin included  *respublica* [republic], from res + publica. Greek also had some similar examples. 

See this free pdf:

http://diesgaudii.genvid.com/latin/compounds/syntactic-compounds.pdf


There are other examples among zoological genera, such as Camarasaurus, Mosasaurus, etc., in which the first part is left in the nominative case (Greek *kamara* "chamber" and Latin *Mosa* for the Meuse River) instead of being changed to a stem with a combining vowel such as "o'" (i.e,, "Camarosaurus," "Mososaurus," etc.).


On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. <tholtz@umd.edu> wrote:

I wasn’t a reviewer on this (although I was interviewed about it last week), and so I wasn’t able to catch the name issue.

 

But shouldn’t it more properly be Muriraptor? You aren’t supposed to use the full nominative singular in a compound word like this.

 

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu         Phone: 301-405-4084
Principal Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology

Office: Geology 4106, 8000 Regents Dr., College Park MD 20742

Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/

Phone: 301-405-6965
Fax: 301-314-9661              

Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park Scholars

Office: Centreville 1216, 4243 Valley Dr., College Park MD 20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
Fax: 301-314-9843

Mailing Address:        Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                        Department of Geology
                        Building 237, Room 1117

                        8000 Regents Drive
                        University of Maryland
                        College Park, MD 20742-4211 USA

 

From: dinosaur-l-request@usc.edu [mailto:dinosaur-l-request@usc.edu] On Behalf Of Ben Creisler
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2016 2:11 PM
To: dinosaur-l@usc.edu
Subject: [dinosaur] Murusraptor, New Megaraptoran Theropod from Late Cretaceous of Argentina (free pdf)

 

 

Ben Creisler

 

New in PLoS ONE:

 

Rodolfo A. Coria &  Philip J. Currie (2016)

A New Megaraptoran Dinosaur (Dinosauria, Theropoda, Megaraptoridae) from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia. 

PLoS ONE 11(7): e0157973. 

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0157973

 

A skeleton discovered in the Upper Cretaceous Sierra Barrosa Formation (Turonian-Coniacian) of Neuquén Province, Argentina represents a new species of theropod dinosaur related to the long snouted, highly pneumatized Megaraptoridae. The holotype specimen of Murusraptor barrosaensis n.gen et n.sp. (MCF-PVPH-411) includes much of the skull, axial skeleton, pelvis and tibia. Murusraptor is unique in having several diagnostic features that include anterodorsal process of lacrimal longer than height of preorbital process, and a thick, shelf-like thickening on the lateral surface of surangular ventral to the groove between the anterior surangular foramen and the insert for the uppermost intramandibular process of the dentary. Other characteristic features of Murusraptor barrosaensis n.gen. et n. sp.include a large mandibular fenestra, distal ends of caudal neural spines laterally thickened into lateral knob-like processes, short ischia distally flattened and slightly expanded dorsoventrally. Murusraptor belongs to a Patagonian radiation of megaraptorids together with Aerosteon, Megaraptor and Orkoraptor. In spite being immature, it is a larger but more gracile animal than existing specimens of Megaraptor, and is comparable in size with Aerosteon and Orkoraptor. The controversial phylogeny of the Megaraptoridae as members of the Allosauroidea or a clade of Coelurosauria is considered analyzing two alternative data sets.

 

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