Comments on: Dinosaur Division is All in the Hips

By: 'Dr'. S Beckmann, BS

'Dr'. S Beckmann, BS — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:07:00 +0000

Pluto was once a planet.

By: Christina Wilsdon

Christina Wilsdon — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:42:03 +0000

Seeley had no idea how confusing he’d make it for preschool dinosaur fans in the early 1960s. I still have the dinosaur book I read avidly growing up, and remember how confused I was about the hip bones, especially since the diagrams never showed you which way the dinosaur’s head was and which way the tail was…there were always just these free-floating pelvic structures. I remember just deciding that they named the “bird-hipped dinosaurs” because the ornithischian hip looked a little bit like a bird’s head (with the pubis and ischium forming the beak)…then satisfying myself that this must be so because it also looked like a duckbill’s head. I guess dino-steeped preschoolers would have done well as scientists back in the day of the “doctrine of signatures” type of healing!

By: Matt Martyniuk

Matt Martyniuk — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:24:58 +0000

@Jon Tennant
As groups above the rank of family, the ICZN has no say about names like Ornithischia and Ornithopoda. Their continued use is just a matter of convention. The ICPN, which will govern all taxonomic names above genus and species, is another story, but it’s unlikely they’ll change such well-established names.

By: Jon Tennant

Jon Tennant — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:47:38 +0000

I wonder if someone could actually petition the ICZN about this. It’s weird too for Ornithopoda – “bird foot”..