Pedantry (was RE: Gingko berries as evidence of dino sense of smell?)

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette
>
> Perhaps dinosaur extinction was caused by the closing of too many Chinese
> restaurants at the K-T boundary resulting in a lack of dietary
> Gingko Biloba.

Please, let us get our taxonomic grammar correct, even if the "nutritional
supplement" crowd doesn't:  It is _Gingko biloba_.  Uppercase "G", lowercase
"b", and italicized.

And don't anyone use the phrase "Homo Sapien" in my hearing or reading...
:-).

> The point, however, is whether all of this indicates anything useful about
> dino noses.

*Unsubstantiated, undocumented rumor alert*: my paleobotany professor
related a story that, at a zoo where crocs of some sort were kept in a pen
with gingko trees for shade, the crocs would gobble up the gingko "fruit"
almost as soon as they fell.  Perhaps they smell really tasty to
archosaurs...

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
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