RE: Icelandic names for dinosaurs

[Jaime Headden <qi_leong@hotmail.com>]

I suspect that's actually the case: the name is used for both. It is an 
informal, non-taxonomic label.

I don't think Icelanders are making up their own names for taxa, but are 
instead transliterating them -- Spanish does the same for both Spain and 
Argentina (e.g., "tiranosauro" for everyone's favorite scavenger-boogeyman, and 
is used a proper noun), and I think the same is true in Brasil for Português. 

Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden
The Bite Stuff (site v2)
http://qilong.wordpress.com/

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a
different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race
has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or
his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion 
Backs)





----------------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2011 18:52:04 +1000
> From: allenph@unimelb.edu.au
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Icelandic names for dinosaurs
>
>
> The Icelandic names seem, typically, to be formed on the basis of the 
> standard ICZN names, using Icelandic equivalents of the Greco-Latin 
> components. The name for Apatosaurus, though
> Thorsedhla
> (writing th and dh for the Icelandic letters thorn and edh, and ignoring the 
> accent over the o) seems to be based on the old name Brontosaurus: Thor being 
> the god of thunder in Norse myth.