RE: Tsaagan mangas - new dromaeosaurid from Mongolia

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Nick Pharris (npharris@umich.edu) wrote:

<OK, so it looks like Khalkha Mongolian uses adjective-noun order.  But what
happens if we want to put another species into the genus _Tsaagan_?  The name
doesn't make any sense if you split it up.>

  This is only a problem if you're intention is to make names that work under
another organization, otherwise people are free to make species names that make
little to no sense in relation to their genera, without as much hubbub (or at
least, limited to their field's own proclivities, as in the multitude of
arthropod genera/species named using nonsense words).

  As it stands, the authors who named *Tsaagan* are likely to consider that
there would never be another species of it, as the species and genus names are
coined as a single entity, not a genus, THEN a species (the normal convention).
This allows, as in work by Novacek and Flynn, the ability to coin a binomen for
a singular animal, and leave the worrying about multiple species to people who
have to prove their case. As it is, the species IS the genus, and one can
simply coin an entirely new binomen for that additional species.

  Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden
http://bitestuff.blogspot.com/

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


 
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