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Re: Zhuchengtyrannus, new Chinese tyrannosaurine
On Thu, Mar 31st, 2011 at 8:34 PM, David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
wrote:
> > > Upper Cretaceous Moroccan red beds in North Africa have yielded a
> > > large abelisaurid, _Sigilmassasaurus brevicollis_, together with the
> > > tetanurans _Carcharodontosaurus saharicus_ and _Spinosaurus
> > > aegyptiacus_ (Weishampel et al., 2004).
>
> This says flat-out that *S.* is "a large abelisaurid".
The sentence structure would be considered ambiguous in English (but then what
about English
*isn't* ambiguous?). The following would have unambiguously stated that
S.brevicollis was a large
abelisaurid:
"...have yielded a large abelisaurid (_Sigilmassasaurus brevicollis_), together
with..."
A clearly unambiguous version might have been:
"Upper Cretaceous Moroccan red beds in North Africa have yielded a
large abelisaurid, together with _Sigilmassasaurus brevicollis_ and the
tetanurans _Carcharodontosaurus saharicus_ and _Spinosaurus
aegyptiacus_ (Weishampel et al., 2004)."
Then again, the world would be a boring old place if you took the ambiguity out
of English. To
quote Groucho Marx:
"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll
never know."
--
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Dann Pigdon
Spatial Data Analyst Australian Dinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia http://home.alphalink.com.au/~dannj
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