Re: Yanornis NOT an enantiornithine!

[bh480@scn.org]

Many thanks for your help with the translation! I need to 
point out a little twist about the name Yanornis, however. 
The same character meaning "swallow" was also the name of 
the one-time Kingdom of Yan in the Chaoyang region of 
Liaoning Province. The Chinese are very fond of puns and 
it's highly likely the name Yanornis is a play on both 
meanings. The species name is very likely meant to honor 
Larry Martin, an American paleontologist interested in 
Chinese birds. If I could get the article in PDF form to 
work, I might be able to confirm the etymologies. Can you 
get the title, authors and abstract at 
http://www.scichina.com/kz/0105/kz0371.stm to show up in 
Chinese characters? I'm still trying.  

> bh480@scn.org wrote:
> > 
> > Yanornis NOT an enantiornithine!
> > From: Ben Creisler bh480@scn.org
> > 
>  (called "Yan
> > bird" in the Chinese text), and it is NOT an
> > enantiornithine! Here's a very rough rendering on one
> > sentence:
> > "Yan bird [Yanornis] is a  Liaoxi Early Cretaceous 
newly discovered ..nearly complete fossilized bird, 
belonging to the modern bird division."
> > Translating this stuff accurately is time-consuming but
> > I'll have more results soon.
> > <a 
href="http://www.scichina.com/kz/0105/kzfm05.stm";>http://ww
w.scichina.com/kz/0105/kzfm05.stm</a>
> > 
> That "yan" is the word for a common bird, the swallow.  
The Chinese name is "ma3 shi4 yan4 -- The "ma" preserves 
the name "martini" in Chinese,while the "shi" is just a 
word that says the preceding character indicates a 
person's name.  Near as I can tell with my fallible 
Chinese, it is called Ma(rtini's) Swallow.