Re: [dinosaur] RETRACTION: Oculudentavis, new smallest known Mesozoic bird in amber from Cretaceous of Myanmar

[Gregory Paul <gsp1954@aol.com>]

Zarafatitan sounds good for another brachiosaur along with Giraffasaurus. 

I made a boo-boo when I made Giraffatitan a subgenus. I had not noticed that the medial dorsal rib attachments of B. altithorx are set on strange and rather obvious peduncles not found in brancai or any other dinosaur. Doh. Had I realized that would have had no choice but to make Giraffatitan a genus in 88. M Taylor did it later in JVP, although he too missed the peduncles. I mention them in a note listed in my web CV. 

GSPaul

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Williams <tijawi@gmail.com>
To: dinosaur-l@usc.edu
Sent: Sun, Jul 26, 2020 9:16 pm
Subject: Re: [dinosaur] RETRACTION: Oculudentavis, new smallest known Mesozoic bird in amber from Cretaceous of Myanmar

I've gotten used to _Giraffatitan_.  Though if memory serves, it was originally created as a subgenus of _Brachiosaurus_, and was only 'promoted' to a genus much later (when it became apparent that _B. brancai_ should not be included in the same genus as _B. altithorax_).

My hope is that if someone else does name a genus after our friend the giraffe (genus _Giraffa_) that they use the original Arabic word 'zarafa'.  _Zarafasaura_ is already available, as a genus of elasmosaurid discovered in Morocco (full credit to the authors of _Zarafasaura_, which references the name 'zarafa' the local people gave to plesiosaur fossils).  But 'Zarafatitan' has a nice ring to it for a brachiosaurid. 

I have no problem at all with the name _Argentinosaurus_ either.  There is a long tradition of dinosaurs being named after the nation they were discovered in.  _Argyrosaurus_ is another titanosaur that was named after Argentina (derived from 'argentum', Latin for silver; 'argyros' is Greek for silver).

On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 6:03 AM Gregory Paul <gsp1954@aol.com> wrote:

The best name ever carefully crafted for a dinosaur genus? 

 

That of course is obvious. It is the one for my favorite dinosaur. 

Giraffatitan. 

:):):):):):):)

No doubt all agree.

You see, it was obvious that the gracile snd short tailed by sauropod terms sauropod that most looked like a giraffe, and like the latter was from Africa, just had to be named after the high shouldered long necked mammalian high browser. Like duh. The prob was the last portion of the name. 

I was going to name if Giraffasaurus. But I was not entirely happy with that so when editor Bakker balked at yet another dinoname ending in saurus I mulled it over. It was obvious that titan had to be the ending because that designated the enormity of the colossal beast. Putting titan at the end of a dinosaur name was not unique -- Mike B did it with Anatotitan (I do not remember if I remembered that at the time and it was a tribute or not). Some bugs have it. 

Of course these days titan is the ending of many a sauropod generic title. A nice legacy. You are all more than welcome.  

That said I hope that someone names another gracile brachiosaur Giraffasaurus. Preferably one from the L Jurassic, best from Africa but neither is absolutely necessary of course. 

I have no idea what is wrong with Argentinosaurus. Had it not been found in Argentina, then it would be problem. As it is it is huge beast, the locales are proud of that, so they named it after their nation. What is the problem with that? 

GSPaul