Re: Lizard of Oz

[Jack <jconrad@lib.drury.edu>]

On Tue, 9 Jun 1998, Paul Franklin wrote:

> > 
> With reference to the naming conventions, I believe that names could and
> should be almost anything.  Of course there should be a scientific
> classification, but a common name for some of these beasts would be a
> lot easier for most people to reference.  Just my two cents.

I recently was thinking about this when working on lesson plans for the
Mesozoic Paleobiology course I'm co-teaching.  Of course we've got
"dromie" for dromaeosaurs, "rex" for T.rex (we commonly call other
tyrannosaurids "kings"), "trike" for chasmosaurines, "ruf" for roof
(=stego) in stegosaurs.  Some of these are pretty useless I guess and it
is unscientific to do, but it is simply easier and I like the idea of
trying to come up with these common names.

Jack 

P.S. Thanks to the list for inventing the common name "dromie," hope you
guys and gals haven't copyrighted it yet :)  !!