Re: New Dinosauricon Taxon Pages: _Therizinosauria_

[Mike Taylor <mike@seatbooker.net>]

> Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 20:08:45 -0800 (PST)
> From: "T. Michael Keesey" <mightyodinn@yahoo.com>
> 
> >   As I wrote in the original post, each species has a unique prima
> > nomen, and I just detailed this. I kinda hope it wasn't overlooked
> > originally.
> 
> So you would want to give every species a unique praenomen (based on
> a genus name, if available)? Then what's the point of having the
> second part of the name at all? And how are we supposed to name all
> those species which have never been type of their own genus?

Jaime surely did not mean that _Diploducus longus_ and _Diplodocus
carnegiei_ would have to have different "first names" (that is, first
space-separated component of their single names).

Or perhaps I should say ...

        Qilong once again displays his lamentable lack of
        familiarity with the necessary prime paradigmatic
        literature with his excessively verbose totuous
        linguistic contusions.  If, contrary to past
        experience and future expectation, he took the trouble
        to familiarise himself with the extensive panoply of
        overlooked papers on extant feathered theropod diapsid
        craniate eukaryotes, he would surely see the futility
        of his ill-founded line of argumentation, as
        G. S. Paul's clear explication and Dr. Holtz's
        phylogenetic analyses (2000, 2001) clearly show.  Many
        species of extant parrot exhibit flocking and larval
        metamorphosis, so using game-theoretic stochastic
        virtual jargon recombinators we can see that this
        forms a behaviouristic "template" within which to form,
        as the lamented S. J. Gould has demonstrated,
        hypodigmatical theses concering sauropod social
        behaviour ("kissing" or "suckling") within the context
        of an appropriate philosophical "environs" for
        spreading long-incubation-time viruses.  Which just
        shows again how ignorant Qilong is.

[Sorry, Jaime, it had to be done :-)  I don't think I've _quite_
caught the flavour, but it's in the right ball-park, isn't it?]

> There are millions of named species, and far more currently
> unnamed. It does not seem possible to give each one a unique,
> pronounceable name. This is why I (at least provisionally) went with
> the option of including the citation as part of the full name.

Au contraire -- each of the millions of named species _already has_ a
unique, pronouncable name.  It's just that each of those names happens
to have a space in the middle.  We mustn't let an accident of
typography (and, OK, the historical interpretation of that space)
prevent our recognising those unique names.

 _/|_    _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor   <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>   www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Some can and some can't.  That's how it is" -- A. A. Milne.

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