Re: smallest ANCIENT non-bird dinosaur - was what I was asking

["T. Michael Keesey" <keesey@gmail.com>]

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 9:18 AM, John Conway <john.a.conway@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  But wait--the scientific community doesn't get to define vernacular terms
> anyhow. No one's talking about defining the actual term "bird"
> scientifically. We're talking about "aves", which will never match
> vernacular usage of "bird" no matter how much we argue about it (we should
> probably give up). Don't try to tell me not to call Hesperornis a bird--the
> idea's laughable--but if it falls outside aves, who cares really?

Agreed. Like Scott, I prefer a crown group definition for _Aves_, but
that doesn't mean I automatically extrapolate it to the word "bird".

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 9:37 AM, David Marjanovic
<david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:
>
>  I cannot imagine this working, because Aves _means_ "birds", and people
> know it. (Especially if they speak Spanish or Portuguese.)

Arguably "fowl" is a much better English translation of _Aves_.
Spanish speakers still get to use "pÃjaro", in any event. (German
doesn't seem to have the same birds/fowls//pÃjaros/aves//oiseaux/aves
dichotomy of some other European languages.)

(Incidentally, apparently the Old English version of "bird" just
referred to young fowl, not adults. Meanings change!)

>  It's _simply not true_ that the scientific community doesn't get to define
> vernacular terms.

I think we may be seeing a divide between English and other languages
here. English is noteable for its large (mostly borrowed) vocabulary,
with a great variety of possible words to use for various things.
Often there'll be a coarse Germanic (Anglo-Saxon or possibly Norse)
word, a more refined Norman French word, and a clinical Greek or Latin
word all for more or less the same thing. (Example: ox/beef/bovine.)
The clinical words, along with English's vast assortment of borrowed
words, are fairly opaque to most speakers--the etymology is not
obvious to the layman.

In English perhaps we are more comfortable with the idea of a division
between clinical and everyday nomenclature? I am often amused when I
read German texts by the use of what seem like "coarse" words to me
(as a native English speaker). In English we frequently vernacularize
Graeco-Latin names: avian, pterosaur, etc. German seems to avoid this
whenever possible ("Vogel" for "avian") or do it halfheartedly
("Flugsaurier" for "pterosaur"). ("Dinosaurier" is one rare exception
I can think of.) In German, as in many languages, there doesn't seem
to be the same division between opaque clinical and transparent
commonplace terms that English has.

Anyone agree with this observation? Disagree?

> When people are told that *Eohippus* and even *Propalaeotherium* (the Messel 
> horselet) are horses,
> while *Thoatherium* is not one, most of them eat it up.

Stem-horses, not horses!

> When people are told that *Ambulocetus* and *Pakicetus* are whales, walking 
> whales, most of them
> accept it as a revealed fact

Stem-whales, not whales!

-- 
T. Michael Keesey
Director of Technology
Exopolis, Inc.
2894 Rowena Avenue Ste. B
Los Angeles, California 90039
http://exopolis.com/
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