Re: Re-use a name?

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 97-06-28 00:56:56 EDT, sarima@ix.netcom.com (Stanley
Friesen) writes:

<< >I recall reading somewhere recently of a name given a dinosaur (might
 >have been _Centrosaurus_) that was questioned, branded invalid 
 >because it had been used before, then resurrected on the grounds that
 >the older use turned out to be a junior synonym of another genus
 >name.
 
 You apparently heard the story wrong.
 
 It was resurrected because the "older" name was unavailable - I think it
 turned out to be a nomen nudum, or perhaps it was a nomen oblitum.  Mere
 synonymy is *not* sufficient to make a name unavailable. >>

Here is a description of the situation, excerpted from my as-yet-unpublished
Dinosaur Folios #2:

...the name Centrosaurus was first used in 1843 by naturalist Leopold Joseph
Fitzinger for a horned lizard, and this ancient usage threatens to preoccupy
the ceratopian genus. The reason we say "threatens" is that Fitzinger used
the name as a junior synonym, and the Code rules that such a name cannot
preoccupy a later genus unless either (1) someone has used it as a standalone
generic name or (2) someone has considered it a preoccupying name
(technically, a senior homonym)—as long as these events occurred prior to
1961. Although we have found such a usage of the Fitzinger name as early as
1964 (listed by Oskar Kuhn as potentially preoccupying the stegosaur genus
Kentrosaurus as well as the ceratopian Centrosaurus), and it occurs as a
synonym of a different lizard genus (the Gila monster) in Alfred Sherwood
Romer's 1956 monograph Osteology of the Reptiles, hinting that something of
taxonomic significance may have happened to it, we have so far not found it
used explicitly as a standalone genus or senior homonym prior to 1961. There
is, however, a large body of non-dinosaurian herpetological literature still
to be checked, so we are by no means ready to declare Fitzinger's name a
nomen oblitum ("forgotten name") just yet. Also, there is the problem that
for many years the ceratopian Centrosaurus was itself considered a junior
synonym of Monoclonius with no need for a replacement name: Nobody would have
bothered raising the Fitzinger issue under such circumstances.

On the other hand, in the absence of an ICZN ruling that squelches for all
time Fitzinger's Centrosaurus, we are not prepared to accept that name as
completely valid for the ceratopian. In their 1989 volume A Bibliography of
the Dinosauria (Exclusive of the Aves), Daniel J. Chure and John S. McIntosh
proposed a replacement name, Eucentrosaurus, in the event Centrosaurus were
shown to be preoccupied. We prefer Eucentrosaurus to Centrosaurus, because
the former name unambiguously designates the ceratopian, not Fitzinger's
lizard, and we would like to establish Eucentrosaurus as the proper name for
the genus in order to deal with the problem without petitioning the ICZN.
Accordingly, we consider Lambe's name Centrosaurinae invalid at every family
level; in particular, it should not be used (with the suffix "-idae") to
replace the name Ceratopidae...