Galveosaurus vs Galvesaurus

[Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

Under the heading of "And I thought I'd seen everything," comes this...

Sánchez-Hernández, B. (2006)  The new sauropod from Spain: _Galveosaurus_ or 
_Galvesaurus_?  Zootaxa 1201: 63-68.

Abstract: "On August 11th, 2005 I published a paper in which I described a 
new genus and species of sauropod dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic-Lower 
Cretaceous of Galve, Spain: _Galveosaurus herreroi_.  Unfortunately, four 
months later, a second paper based on the same dinosaur remains was 
published by different authors.  In this second paper, the authors gave the 
specimens a similar binomial name to the name I gave (with a difference of 
one letter, an ?o?): _Galvesaurus herreroi_.  In that paper, available 
on-line in pdf format from January 2006, the authors not only ignored my 
work, but they included a publication date: 1st July, 2005.  Nevertheless, 
the article is included in the issue 15th of July-December, as could be read 
in every page of that work.  The issue was published on 18th December 2005, 
but according to the ICZN code (articles 21 and 23), the date of publication 
of the Barco et al. (2005) paper should be considered as December 31st, 2005 
and based on the Principle of Priority, the name _Galveosaurus herreroi_ 
Sánchez-Hernández, 2005 has priority and _Galvesaurus herreroi_ Barco, 
Canudo, Cuenca-Bescós and Ruíz-Omeñaca, 2005 should be considered as a 
junior synonym of the former and therefore, an invalid name."

To summarize, in 2005 Barbara Sánchez-Hernández described a sauropod from 
Galve, Spain, under the name _Galveosaurus herreroi_ in the journal Zootaxa. 
 That same year, Barco &c described a sauropod, also from Galve, that they 
named _Galvesaurus herreroi_ in an issue of the magazine Naturaleza 
Aragonesa.  The two names are based on the same holotype material, which was 
deposited at the same museum (Museo Paleontológico de Galve).  Apparently 
the two sets of researchers didn't cross paths before hand with regards to 
the description of the Galve sauropod.  In this 2006 paper in Zootaxa, 
Sánchez-Hernández claims that her publication has date priority, because 
even though her paper was published in August, and the other paper claims to 
be published in July, the issue publication date of the latter is given as 
July-December, and the publication did not come out until December, 2005.

In support of her case, a number of websites are tendered that mention the 
name _Galveosaurus_ soon after official publication.

http://libcat.amnh.org/search/tZootaxa2005/tzootaxa2005/-2,0,0,B/crC1106711&FF=tzootaxa&1,1
http://dml.cmnh.org/2005Aug/msg00301.html,
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveosaurus,
http://lesdinos.free.fr/actualites.htm,
http://personal2.stthomas.edu/jstweet/new.htm,
http://dinonews.net/forum/ctus.php?return=1&cit=8786,
http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/haaramo/Metazoa/Deuterostoma/Chordata/Archosauria/
Sauropodomorpha/Sauropoda.htm,
http://dml.cmnh.org/2005Dec/msg00274.html

As you can see, two of these are DML pages.  (Another claim to fame for the 
DML.)

BTW, I would say that irrespective of which genus (_Galveosaurus_ or 
_Galvesaurus_) has date priority, both names are valid in the nomenclatural 
sense.  So when Sánchez-Hernández says: "_Galveosaurus_ Sánchez-Hernández 
2005 has priority and _Galvesaurus herreroi_ Barco, Canudo, Cuenca-Bescós 
and Ruíz-Omeñaca, 2005 should be considered as a junior synonym of the 
former and therefore, an invalid name."... the name _Galvesaurus_ is still 
valid under ICZN rules; it is just relegated to a junior objective synonym 
of _Galveosaurus_.  A genus or species has to be valid in order for it to be 
a junior synonym.

References

Barco, J.L., Canudo, J.L., Cuenca-Bescós, G. & Ruíz-Omeñaca, J.I. (2005) Un 
nuevo dinosaurio saurópodo, _Galvesaurus herreroi_ gen. nov., sp. nov., del 
tránsito Jurásico-Cretácico en Galve (Teruel, NE de España). Naturaleza 
Aragonesa 15: 4-17.

Sánchez-Hernández, B. (2005) _Galveosaurus herreroi_, a new sauropod 
dinosaur from Villar del
Arzobispo Formation (Tithonian-Berriasian) of Spain. Zootaxa 1034: 1?20.

The paper also cites Justin and I as references!

Tweet, J. (2005) What´s New (17/08/2005), Thescelosaurus! Available from: 
http://personal2.stthomas. edu/jstweet/new.htm (23/01/2006).

Williams, T. (2005) Galveosaurus herreroi, new sauropod from the Late 
Jurassic of Spain.
Archives of the dinosaur mailing list, Fri, 19 Aug 2005, The Claveland [sic] 
Museum of Natural
History Museum. Available from: http://dml.cmnh.org/2005Aug/msg00301.html 
(23/01/2006).

Williams, T. (2005) Dino Genera & Species List 2005 (was Re: New versiton of 
Dinosaur Encyclopaedia).  Archives of the dinosaur mailing list, Fri, 16 Dec 
2005, The Claveland Museum of
Natural History Museum. Available from: 
http://dml.cmnh.org/2005Dec/msg00274.html (23/
01/2006).