Re: Fictional creatures in Gee & Rey's Field Guide to Dinosaurs

["Tim Williams" <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

Jaime Headden wrote:

> "Ichabodcraniosaurus" was a nickname for a [formerly] headless skeleton of 
> *Velociraptor* that frustrated the efforts of the collecting team. 
> Similarly, "Big Momma" or "Mama" does not get granted a nomen nudum status, 
> even though the W. Irving name had a -
> saurus ending which, as I understand it, is why George lists it in his 
> nomen nudum list. This is really impractical to his stated purposes with 
> the list, unless he would also like to list "nick names" and other 
> non-scientific usages, and this would pretty much cause the number of names 
> to explode and follow non-taxonomic usage (Big Al, Sue, Stan, Fred, Fran, 
> Willo, etc. ...).

This is not a criticism of George, but I see Jaime's point entirely.  This 
could be resolved by having the designation of _nomen nudum_ be restricted 
to genera that appear in published scientific literature, under the 
(erroneous) assumption that the name *is* valid.  Thus, Chinshakiangosaurus 
Yeh, 1975 and Rinchenia Barsbold, 1997 qualify as _nomina nuda_.

By contrast, the mere mention of a new dinosaur genus in a newspaper 
article, pop-sci text, dissertation etc should *not* be grounds for 
regarding the name as a _nomen nudum_.  Elvisaurus, Ichabodcraniosaurus and 
even Saltriosaurus have no more scientific standing than Big Al or Big 
Momma.  They were clearly coined as nicknames, although (in some cases) the 
distinction was no doubt lost on writers who featured the names.  After all, 
the -saurus (or -raptor) suffix appears to imply (to the uninformed) that 
these are "bona fide" names.  Sometimes scientists are fooled: remember 
_Ultrasaurus tabriensis_?




Tim


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