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_).
Yes, that's what Greg is referring to. He raised the subgenus Brachiosaurus (Giraffatitan) in his 1988 paper, but that got almost zero uptake, probably in large part because subgenera are simply not used elsewhere in dinosaur palaeontology. In the 2000s I set out to show that the African brachiosaur is the same thing as the American one, probably badly motivated in part by my dislike of the name :-) Of course, the evidence won out and it became apparent that it was much *more* different from the American Brachiosaurus than had been previously recognised â hence the 2009 paper in which I recognised Giraffatitan as a genus. That got a bit of pushback initially (e.g. Chure et al 2010:380, on what I consider rather vague grounds) but a decade on seems to have been pretty universally adopted.
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 agree, that would have been much better :-)
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.
I don't have a *problem* with it â it's obviously not inappropriate. I just think it's desperately unimaginative. A missed opportunity.
REFERENCES
* Chure, Daniel, Brooks B. Britt, John A. Whitlock and Jeffrey A. Wilson. 2010. First complete sauropod dinosaur skull from the Cretaceous of the Americas and the evolution of sauropod dentition. Naturwissenschaften 97(4):379-91. doi:10.1007/s00114-010-0650-6
* Paul, Gregory S. 1988. The brachiosaur giants of the Morrison and Tendaguru with a description of a new subgenus, Giraffatitan, and a comparison of the world's largest dinosaurs. Hunteria 2 (3): 1-14.
* Taylor, Michael P. 2009. A re-evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax Riggs 1903 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) and its generic separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janensch 1914). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29(3):787-806.
-- Mike.