Indeed, Iâd happily ashcan *Oculudentavis*, *Limusaurus*, and *Sciurumimus*, too if I could.You can see -aster in names like *Cotoneaster* âsimilar to *cotoneum*,â i.e. âquince-like.âSince when did "aster" mean "similar"?(If it Abitusavis were Abituavis, at least the first part of the compound is supposed to end in a u, unlike Oculudentavis, since it's fourth-declension rather than second-declension.)On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 3:06 AM Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu> wrote:Unlovely and/or wrongly formed:Preposing simili- is a clunky way of trying to capture the meaning âsimilar to.â What happened to good old -oides (or the somewhat less common -aster)?âAbitusavisâ is supposed to be derived from *abitus* âdepartureâ, but the -s in *abitus* isnât really part of the word: itâs a grammatical ending indicating case and number. If you really want âdeparture bird,â it would be *Abituavis*.What do you mean by that?On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 1:10 AM Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu> wrote:Mickey Mortimer wrote:
âJust as an example, I just checked Similiyanornis and Abitusavis that were described recently, and that's true for them. We would be losing a lot of names this way.âNo great loss, as far as those two are concerned. Ugh.âNick Pharris