Grab-bag post: Parapropalaehoplophorus, a favorite book, Tate 2024

Eoneophron, Parapropalaehoplophorus, Ia io, and friends

The other day Mike wrote to me about the new Hell Creek oviraptorosaur Eoneophron (Atkins-Weltman et al. 2024), commenting that he liked the ‘eoneo’ — old new — part of the name. That sent me down a little etymological rabbit hole. 

Eoneophron is ‘Eo’ for ‘dawn’ and Neophron, the genus name of the Egyptian vulture. The vulture was in turn named for the mythological figure Neophron, whose name means ‘new in mind’ (some sources would idiomatically translate that as ‘foolish in mind’). So Eoneophron does indeed mean ‘old new mind’ or ‘dawn new mind’, by way of an extant dinosaur and a Greek myth — a chain whose every link I find satisfying.

I replied:

You know about the glyptodonts:
– Hoplophorus (Lund 1837) “armor bearer”
– Palaehoplophorus (Ameghino 1883) “ancient armor bearer”
– Propalaehoplophorus (Ameghino 1887) “ancestral ancient armor bearer”
– Parapropalaeohoplophorus (Croft et al. 2007) “beside the ancestral ancient armor bearer”

I’ve always thought that was a pretty cool progression. 

Also, Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis is tied with Roberthoffstetteria nationalgeographica as the longest binomials (38 letters apiece) of any vertebrates. Both are fossil mammals. But they’re both beaten by many others, including:

• Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides, a Southeast Asian soldier fly, at 42 letters, the longest binomial of any animal;
• Myxococcus llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochensis, a soil bacterium, at 73 letters.

There are many more long binomials listed and discussed in this Wikipedia article (this related article is also interesting). Somewhat irritatingly, it only considers the binomials as a whole, and I haven’t yet (i.e., in about five minutes of poking around) found a list of longest genus names specifically.

Famously, the longest genus name (and longest binomial) of any dinosaur is Micropachycephalosaurus hongtuyanensis (23 and 37 letters, respectively), and the shortest is Yi qi (2 and 4). Yi qi is tied with Ia io, the great evening bat, for the shortest genus name and shortest binomial of anything, period. More short binomials here.

Parapropalaehoplophorus and Micropachycephalosaurus, both 23 letters, are 2 letters longer than Parastratiosphecomyia, and I think they’re the longest genus names of any animal, and possibly the longest valid genus names, period. All the longer binomials seem to either have shorter genus names and longer species names, or to be invalid.

There are many like it but this one is mine.

Brown’s Composition of Scientific Words

There are things I haven’t blogged about because they are so far down in my intellectual foundation that I take them for granted. Brown’s Composition of Scientific Words is one of those things.

Brown’s is a sort of parallel English-Greek-Latin dictionary, with a decent number of common English words and a long list of Greek and Latin root words, prefixes, and suffixes, all presented in a single alphabetical list. So if you want to translate a Greek- or Latin-based technical term, or you think of a cool English etymology for a scientific name and want to see how to build it in Greek or Latin, you just go look up the words or word pieces that you want. Fittingly, the book was assembled by a paleo person, the paleobotanist Roland Wilbur Brown (1893-1961).

Rich Cifelli introduced me to the book. Occasionally he’d invite me into his office, pitch me a copy of Brown’s, and we’d roam through it, trying to think of cool names for the fossil mammals and other critters he and the OMNH crew were getting out of Utah, Montana, and Oklahoma. I know that Janumys, named for the two-faced Roman god of beginnings (Eaton and Cifelli 2001), was born from our roamings through Brown’s. When we realized that OMNH 53062 was going to be the holotype of something new, I used Brown’s to come up with a list of 15 or 20 potential genus names before hitting on Sauroposeidon. As luck would have it, Sauroposeidon was not born from Brown’s, but from my then-recent reading of Mary Renault’s The King Must Die, about Theseus and his link to Poseidon, god of earthquakes, plus my exposure to Saurophaganax, which I’ve always thought was a badass name for a badass critter. Anyway, all those unused names are still sitting in my very first research notebook, hoarded against the day that I might need one of them. Maybe I’ll blog about them someday.

Random spread. Okay, not random: the Greek ‘meron’ for ‘thigh’ is one of the components of Brontomerus.

Brown’s seems to have been most recently republished in 2000, by Smithsonian Books, and you can get new paperback copies for about $40, or used ones for half that. Older hardbook copies sometimes turn up in used bookstores, online and off. Mine is a used 1978 hardback, procured for next to nothing back in grad school, and it’s one of my favorite books, period. Anyone who is interested in scientific terms — or who is forced to interact with them whether they’re interested or not *cough* med students *cough* — should have a copy.

Tate 2024

The Tate Geological Museum’s Annual Summer Conference this year is June 7-9, and the theme is “The Jurassic: Death, Diversity, and Dinosaurs”. There’s an impressive speaker list, from Morrison veterans to early-career folks bringing new data and new perspectives — see the roster here. With such a solid slate of researchers coming to talk, I’m particularly honored to have been invited as the keynote speaker, and I’ll be bringing some new ideas that I haven’t previously yapped about. Come out to Casper, Wyoming, and join the fun if you are able.

References

• Atkins-Weltman KL, Simon DJ, Woodward HN, Funston GF, Snively E (2024) A new oviraptorosaur (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the end-Maastrichtian Hell Creek Formation of North America. PLoS ONE 19(1): e0294901. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294901
• Croft, Darin A.; Flynn, John J.; Wyss, André R. (2007). A new basal glyptodontid and other Xenarthra of the early Miocene Chucal Fauna, Northern Chile. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 27(4):781–797.
• Eaton JG and Cifelli RL (2001) Multituberculate mammals from near the Early-Late Cretaceous boundary, Cedar Mountain Formation, Utah. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 46(4):453-518.