Re: [dinosaur] Keresdrakon, new pterosaur from Cretaceous of Brazil (free pdf)

David Marjanovic <[email protected]> wrote:

> > Other examples include Confuciusornis, Xiphosura, etc., where  for ease of pronunciation or clarity of etymology, a first noun is left unmodified with a grammatical ending intact with a consonant before a vowel.
>
> Bad examples: neither ease of pronunciation nor clarity of etymology would be any worse in the expected forms "Confuciornis" and "Xiphura". These names were simply coined by people who – like practically all people on this planet
> except the very few (and shrinking!) who've had a very, very peculiar kind of education – didn't know enough about Latin or Greek to even wonder whether they should ask someone who might know better.


Yes, this is what it boils down to.  In these situations it would be
useful to consult someone who is familiar with the grammatical
conventions of Greek or Latin.  Many 'bad' genus names are based on a
lack of understanding of how the compound name *should* be formed,
based on the original language(s).  I'd say this is the case for
_Confuciusornis_, as well as many other dinosaur genera (e.g.
_Eousdryosaurus_, _Gigantspinosaurus_, _Notatesseraeraptor_,
_Aberratiodontus_, _Alethoalaornis_ etc etc - I could go on, but it's
depressing).

Certain genus names are deliberate portmanteaus, such as _Archelon_
(archos + chelone)  and _Spiclypeus_ (spica + clypeus); so for these
examples the improper formations are deliberate (and also inventive),
to make the names more euphonic.  So they are totally different to
those names in which the first noun is left unmodified (such as
_Confuciusornis_).