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Re: [dinosaur] Gnathovorax, new herrerasaurid (open access)



Ben Creisler
bcreisler@gmail.com


Brazilian news stories are translating the name as: mandÃbulas vorazes, "voracious jaws"'

'significa mandÃbulas vorazes, "[voracious jaws]"'

https://gauchazh.clicrbs.com.br/tecnologia/noticia/2019/11/fossil-de-um-dos-mais-antigos-dinossauros-predadores-do-mundo-e-descoberto-no-rs-ck2ujblhp00a701ph9ewqf4ss.html

An English language news item gives the meaning of the name as "ravenous jaws":

'The skeleton is virtually intact â including razor-sharp teeth and claws that would have made it a ferocious 'killing machine.' Its name means "ravenous jaws!"'

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/science/worlds-oldest-meat-eating-dinosaur-has-been-unearthed/11/11/

==
Gnathovorax is Âa hybrid of Greek noun gnathos "jaw" and the Latin adjective vorax "devouring"--so applying Greek rules is questionable. Latin had Âmore restrictive rules about word order in compounds that would not work here. It's a Neo-Latin invention that has to be seen as an arbitrary name formation that means what the authors wanted it to mean regardless of classical practices.

As I have noted before, there really are no rules in Neo-Latin--it's what usage makes it. With the 2020 implementation of the PhyloCode, the ICZN rules and recommendations on most remaining Latin rules (such as matching or correcting genders in changed genus and species combinations) are dropped for people who decide to use the PhyloCode.Â

On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 7:50 AM David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:
Gesendet:ÂMontag, 11. November 2019 um 04:26 Uhr
Von:Â"Brad McFeeters" <archosauromorph2@hotmail.com>

> Notably, Pacheco et al. (2019) seem to be the first study to recover *Pisanosaurus* closer to Ornithischia than to Silesauridae, after taking into account the studies that find it as a silesaurid.Â

The first published study, yes...

> Etymologically, is *Gnathovorx* the "devouring jaw," or the "devourer of jaws"?

It's "the jaw-voracious one". Whether that means it devours jaws or _has_ jaws is left to context.

(Greek abounds in compound adjectives, at least in poetry. The area around Argos is routinely called "the horse-nourishing Argolid" in the Iliad, for instance.)