Re: [dinosaur] Xunmenglong, new compsognathid theropod from Lower Cretaceous of China

Also _Pinguinus_: the great auk, not penguins.  This one goes back over 200
years, and the origin seems innocent enough.  One hypothesis is that the
great auk (now extinct) was the first bird to be called a pingin/penguin,
and the word was only later applied to the birds we now call penguins.


On Sat, Oct 26, 2019 at 9:10 PM David Marjanovic <[email protected]>
wrote:

> > Fun fact: "xunmenglong" is one of the popular Chinese names used for
> *Velociraptor*. The authors must have known what they were doing with that
> one...
>
> Oh, great. Yet another case like:
> *Fossa fossana*: the fanaloka/jabady. Not the fossa, which is
> *Cryptoprocta ferox*.
> *Agouti*: the pacas, not the agoutis, which are *Dasyprocta*. Fortunately,
> *Agouti* is a junior synonym of *Cuniculus*.
>