Re: [dinosaur] Fwd: Party like it's 1758!

[Paul P <turtlecroc@yahoo.com>]

The ICZN allows lots of things, and it prohibits lots of others. When you step 
back and look at it as a whole, it works pretty well. Much of it is common 
sense.

Can you imagine the chaos if names could be changed at will..? All of taxonomy 
would quickly become a huge mess. It's important to have nomenclatural 
stability (at any level, but especially species). However, removing a species 
from one genus to another isn't a big deal at all. S. ovatus becomes R. ovatus. 
Styracosaurus still is what it was (S. albertensis). Nor does that actually 
change its name--it's simply moving it from one clade (Styracosaurus) to 
another (Rubeosaurus).

Under certain unusual circumstances, names can be changed.

There are bigger problems in taxonomy, such as the synonymization of taxa that 
are distinct. Minotaurasaurus ramachandrani sunk into Tarchia kielanae, for 
instance. No way are those the same species, although it's remotely possible 
that it should be T. ramachandrani. Such synonymizations cause lots of 
subsequent confusion in the literature. Better to leave things separate unless 
you're >98% sure they're conspecific.

As for Giraffa camelopardalis, camelo [camelus] means camel and pardalis 
[pardus] means panther or leopard. Combine them and you get "leopard-camel", 
i.e. a spotted camel. Very descriptive if you know what a camel is and what a 
leopard is, and thus a great animal name. Not misleading at all, i don't think. 
Giraffes are carnivorous, right?

As for the idea of subgenera, I think they are not used much because that's 
splitting hares. 




On Monday, June 22, 2020, 01:41:35 AM UTC, Yazbeck, Thomas <yazbeckt@msu.edu> 
wrote:

> Raise your hand if you wish the ICZN allowed misleading names (like 
> Basilosaurus, Arrhinoceratops, etc.) to be changed.

Giraffa camelopardalis is neither a camel nor a leopard. Do you think this 
misleading name should be changed?

Thomas Yazbeck



---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ethan Schoales
<ethan.schoales@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 7:48 PM
Subject: Fwd: [dinosaur] Party like it's 1758!
To: Yazbeck, Thomas <yazbeckt@msu.edu>

Raise your hand if you wish the ICZN allowed misleading names (like 
Basilosaurus, Arrhinoceratops, etc.) to be changed.



On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 6:25 PM Yazbeck, Thomas <yazbeckt@msu.edu> wrote:

Is there any incentive to split up the Psittacosaurus species into 
'uninomials'? Maybe subgenera are a better option to reduce confusion in 
special cases...