Re: How many species of dinosaur

[Rob Taylor <rjtaylor68@comcast.net>]

Hi Dave,

I maintain a database and can throw out a couple figures, but will no doubt 
have to furnish a handful of caveats along with them. In addition, as I'm 
only an enthusiast, I would strongly urge you to trust any figures received 
from a paleo-pro over these!

In any event, I have a count of 2,330 species, which includes scientifically 
valid and vernacular names, animals once considered to be dinosaurs (but now 
known to be something else), and spelling variations. I am confident that 
all appeared in print somewhere, but at present I can link only about 45-50% 
of them to actual publications.

Important to note that my database is genus-centric, and while I endeavor to 
keep tabs on the validity of associated type species, everything else just 
gets dumped into a bucket without regard to its current status. (Admittedly, 
there's not a lot of utility in this, other than being able to plug a 
combination into Google and see what comes up!) For this reason, attempts to 
drill down may get us closer to a meaningful number, but cannot in any way 
be considered accurate. That said, it's Saturday and I have time to 
construct a query or two, so let's give 'er a go anyway...

At the genus level, I have a total of 1,171 dinosaur names, and consider 893 
to be scientifically valid. Of the valid names, 681 might be considered 
generally well-established, the rest being junior synonyms or nomina dubia. 
At this point, I am limited to simply counting the species found in 
association with the valid and well-established genera. For the former, I 
come up with 1,894 species names, for the latter, 1,387. I have no doubt 
that these counts will be dramatically high - again, owing to the inclusion 
of misspellings and the fact that I've made no effort to track validity at 
the species level - but perhaps they will serve as ultra-conservative 
ballpark estimates until someone can provide you with more accurate counts.

Best regards,

Rob Taylor
Lansdale, PA, USA
rjtaylor68@comcast.net
SVP Member #15293

P.S. My database also includes pterosaurs, for which I have the following 
counts. (Again, I'm an amateur, so please don't be too harsh!) 149 generic 
names, of which I consider 119 to be scientifically valid, and 96 to be 
generally well-established. At the species level, 555 names, with 486 of 
those in association with the valid names and 431 in association with the 
well-established names. I imagine the 54 species I have listed under 
Ornithocheirus alone may skew the latter count by just a smidge!


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Unwin, Dr D.M." <dmu1@leicester.ac.uk>
To: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2008 10:34 AM
Subject: How many species of dinosaur


> Dear All,
>
> A quick question.
>
> Can anyone tell me roughly how many species of dinosaur have been named 
> and, of these, roughly how many are currently considered to be valid? 
> Data, opinions or pointers to web/lit sources all welcome.
>
> Ta,
>
> Dave
>
> PS Yes, I am writing my talk for next weeks meeting on Dinosaurs - A 
> Historical Perspective
> http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/groups/specialist/hogg/pid/2907;jsessionid=D5B1B49C90F0B5910D7ADB4E7FFE6066
>
> ___________________________________________________________________
> DAVID M UNWIN
> Department of Museum Studies
> University of Leicester
> 105 Princess Road East
> LEICESTER LE1 2LG
> UK
>
> Email:     dmu1@le.ac.uk
> Work tel: +44 116 252 3947
> Dept tel:  +44 116 252 3963
> Fax:         +44 116 252 3960
> http://www.le.ac.uk/museumstudies/contactus/davidunwin.html
> ____________________________________________________________________