Re: Saurus plurals

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 7/21/99 4:37:33 PM EST, qilongia@yahoo.com writes:

<< Dinogeorge has expounded on the -orum, -arum
 convention in taxa names, effectively derived from the
 Latin *sorum*, a heap or pile, or bunch, of something
 (or someONES). >>

Don't know whether this is true; all I know is that -orum and -arum are the 
plural genitive inflections and are conventionally used when two or more 
people are being honored in a species name. There is one dinosaur name, 
Iguanodon exogyrarum, whose species epithet derives from a genus of some kind 
of shell named Exogyra that is plentiful in the marine-fossil layer wherein 
the fossil was found. There are lots of Exogyra shells in the layer, hence 
the plural genitive ending. Somebody once emended the epithet to 
"exogyrarus," thinking that the -um signified a neuter ending mismatched with 
a masculine generic name, but this emendation is entirely unjustified. The 
only thing gender has to do with the species epithet is that Exogyra is 
feminine and requires the feminine plural genitive ending -arum (rather than 
-orum).