Goofy dinosaur names: WAS Tsaagan mangas - new dromaeosaurid from Mongolia

[David Krentz <ddkrentz@charter.net>]

   If Jamie said he thought Bambiraptor was a goofy name, I'd  
wholeheartedly agree with him.  That ankylosaur named after all the  
Jurassic Park cast is also silly.  Naming a dinosaur after Stan  
Winston is also a bad idea, just ask anyone who has survived working  
with him.

 Achelousaurus is a great old fashioned name!
David Krentz
On Dec 11, 2006, at 4:16 PM, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> On 12/12/06, Jamie Stearns <stearns5@cox.net> wrote:
> > My point wasn't the "mangas" part at all, and perhaps "goofy"  
> > wasn't the
> > proper word.
> >
> > When the whole scientific naming concept got started, as I recall,  
> > Latin and
> > Greek were used for naming because they were dead languages and  
> > would not
> > change over time. This would be good for ensuring stability in  
> > nomenclature.
> >
> > With that said, Mongolian and Chinese are definitely not dead  
> > languages, and
> > thus would not be particularly suited for naming taxa, except  
> > where place
> > names are concerned. Though, I suppose this would also be a strike  
> > against
> > "Supersaurus" as a name...
>
> Super- is a Latin prefix meanig "above", "over", "more than" - while
> the compound is odd, I think the ancients would've got more-or-less
> the intended meaning from it.
>
> Now, surely they original adoption of Latin for taxonomy was simply
> due to the fact it was still the language of science in Linnaeus's
> day.
>
> --
> Andreas Johansson
>
> Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?