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Re: VERY Stupid question, but I dont know the answer...

I think that when a family is named, it is automatically (in many cases) named after the first creature that is discovered, named, and that belongs to no known family. For instance, maybe Tyrannosaurus was discovered and named, and it was determined that the specimen represented a new family, so the family was named tyrannosauridae. Then later, Daspletosaurus was discovered and named, and it was determined that it was closely enough related to Tyrannosaurus that it belonged to the same family, so it also became a member of the tyrannosauridae. At any rate, I could be wrong, since I deal with mostly Pleistocene critters and don't know alot about dinos. I'm just assuming that this is the way things are handled in general with issues such as this. You may also want to look at the ICZN (International Committee on Zoological Nomenclature) rules for naming animals.


From: dachande <dachande@west.com.br>
Reply-To: dachande@west.com.br
To: Dino Miling List <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Subject: VERY Stupid question, but I dont know the answer...
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 17:19:52 -0300

Here is the question:
Its about dinosaur grouping.As all of us know there are many dinosaur
familys like tyrannosauridae, spinosauridae, dromeosauridae and many
others.My question is why is a family named after one individual from
many others of its family.For example, why couldent the family
tyrannosauridae be named daspletosauridae, daspletosaurus is from
tyrannosauridae, so why was T-rex chosen to represent the family? I know
that the characteristics of the T-rex resemble those to others of its
group, but dont the characteristics of daspletosaurus resemble those of
T-rex.
 I am very confused could someone explain this to me?

               Thanks for your atention!


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