Re: what do monitor lizards monitor?

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Dann Pigdon wrote:

<Monitor lizards are known in Arab countries as the
Ouran or varan. Apparently "Ouran" sounds a bit like a
German word, (for "Sentry" I think) that was later
mis-translated into English as "Monitor". I don't have
the exact text with me (it's somewhere in Rodney
Steel's "Living Dragons").>

  Funny thing is, _ouran_ means "brave guardian" or
similar, and was the point when Taquet called his
Nigerian iguanodont *Ouranosaurus*, meaning the "brave
monitor lizard," for a mythic dragon (or lizard)
killed and buried in the sands, and later uncovered
(by Taquet) so the name has a lot of religious and
historical context.

  [from, _Les Imprintes des Dinosaures_ (Taquet, 1996)
"Dinosaur Impressions", translated (Padian, 1996) --
forgive the lack of accents]
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