Re: [dinosaur] "Yunyangosaurus" is not available

[Tim Williams <tijawi@gmail.com>]

I know there is going to be a lot of people who disagree with me on
this, but... I'm not certain it's useful to declare a whole swathe of
dinosaur genera as nomina nuda, simply because they fall afoul of some
technicality in the ICZN Code (Article 8.5.3).  Instead, a pragmatic
'community standard' can be applied here.  If workers in the field
continue to treat these names as valid, then for all intents and
purposes they are valid.  All were published in legitimate journals
(with an ISSN), with the best of intentions - there is no hint of
malfeasance.  So until this nomenclatural issue is rectified or
resolved, I think the best course of action is to continue to treat
these digitally published names as available.  There's no need to
throw the baby out with the bathwater.



On Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 4:35 PM Tyler Greenfield
<tgreenfield999@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Jim Kirkland has pointed out on Twitter that Geology of the Intermountain 
> West seems to be in the same situation. This would mean that Maraapunisaurus 
> and Dryosaurus elderae are nomina nuda as well.
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__twitter.com_Paleojim_status_1220573427188191232&d=DwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=Ry_mO4IFaUmGof_Yl9MyZgecRCKHn5g4z1CYJgFW9SI&m=7ttzoy3StzASf7ytO6xXwHAU_FW9kDGUZvaUjD-_l9Y&s=5XxcN1ImSTYA6zC2Bk97tDuE69ZKAp5FRzX7_zmGwMI&e=
>  
>
> On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 1:31 PM David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> 
> wrote:
>>
>> Gesendet: Dienstag, 21. Januar 2020 um 17:24 Uhr
>> Von: "Mickey Mortimer" <mickey_mortimer111@msn.com>
>> Betreff: [dinosaur] Validity of "Yunyangosaurus" / is Scientific Reports 
>> published physically?
>>
>> > Hi all.  While writing the "Yunyangosaurus" entry for The Theropod 
>> > Database, I noticed Dai et al.'s (2020) paper describing it has no mention 
>> > of ZooBank.  ICZN Article 8.5.3. states names published electronically 
>> > must "be registered in the Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature 
>> > (ZooBank) (see Article 78.2.4) and contain evidence in the work itself 
>> > that such registration has occurred."  So this obviously fails, and the 
>> > name doesn't show up in ZooBank either.  Normally that solves itself 
>> > eventually by the physical publication of the journal volume, but 
>> > "Yunyangosaurus" was described in Scientific Reports.  As far as I can 
>> > tell, Scientific Reports has no actual volumes,  just a huge list of 
>> > articles every year, which would suggest it is not physically published.  
>> > Is this so?  And if so, doesn't that indicate that Dai et al. 2020 will 
>> > never be valid under the ICZN and that something else needs to be done by 
>> > the authors to fix this?
>>
>> According to its website, Scientific Reports has an online ISSN, but a paper 
>> ISSN is nowhere mentioned. This means that, as expected, it is published 
>> exclusively online, and that the name "Yunyangosaurus" is not available from 
>> the publication by Dai et al. (2020) or any other that yet exists.
>>
>> "Not available" means the ICZN doesn't recognize it as even existing. It 
>> does not compete for synonymy or homonymy.
>>
>> So, the ethical thing to do is to alert the authors that they need to 
>> publish a whole new paper. In that paper, they can say "Diagnosis: see Dai 
>> et al. (2020)", so the paper can be quite short, but it needs to be a whole 
>> new publication.