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Course: American Museum of Natural History > Unit 1
Lesson 1: What is a dinosaur?- What makes a dinosaur a dinosaur?
- What is and is not a dinosaur?
- What is and is not a dinosaur?
- How do dinosaurs get their names?
- How do dinosaurs get their names?
- Linking birds and dinosaurs
- How do we know which kinds of dinosaurs were most closely related?
- How do we know which kinds of dinosaurs were most closely related?
- Quiz: What is a dinosaur?
- Exploration Questions: What is a dinosaur?
- Answers to Exploration Questions: What is a dinosaur?
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How do dinosaurs get their names?
Giving any living or extinct organism a scientific name is governed by a set of rules called the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, and paleontologists who name dinosaurs must follow those rules to make the name valid. The code requires that a scientific name be composed to two parts. The first part, called the genus, is always capitalized; the second, called the species is never capitalized. Both names are always italicized, and sometimes the genus name is abbreviated (as in T. rex for Tyrannosaurus rex). The genus name may be used alone to refer to all the species in a particular genus. Created by American Museum of Natural History.
Want to join the conversation?
- Why is the word "Saur" at the end of most of the Dinosaurs name ?(7 votes)
- "Saur" means lizard, and is used in most dinosaurs' names.(5 votes)
- at0:51, the guy says terrible lizard, when i heard that it was tyrant lizard and terrible lizard is dinosaur. who is correct?(5 votes)
- The name dinosaur means "Terrible Lizard". The word Tyrannosaurus rex means "Tyrant Lizard King" even though dinosaurs were not even related to lizards.(2 votes)
- Which was the most powerful or dangerous Dinosaur that lived on our planet ?(3 votes)
- It depends on what you consider dangerous like Velociraptors were cunning and hunted in packs while Dinos like Apatasaurus were big enough to step on the cunning Velociraptor. Dinosaurs 'Danger level' can vary depending on the situation or event. I just don't think an answer like; "I think Spinosaurus was the most dangerous because it killed that T-rex in Jurassic Park" or size could make a dino 'The most dangerous'. To answer by size is like referring to 1,000 Microraptors vs 10 T-rex'es. Thats my opinion I hope that helps you :).(6 votes)
- Why is the word "Saur" at the end of most of the Dinosaurs name ?(2 votes)
- The root "saur" implies the names of extinct reptiles.(4 votes)
- what was the first living water dinosaur?(2 votes)
- The Spinosaurids. Also just in case you're wondering, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and ichthyosaurs are not dinosaurs, they're marine reptiles. Just because a reptile is extinct does not make it a dinosaur.(3 votes)
- i think dinosaurs got their names by being so being(3 votes)
- What is the newest named Dinosaur? (Most recently named)(2 votes)
- The most recent is called the T. gurneyi
It was found in Portugal and in March 2014.
LInk to sciencedaily post: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140305191427.htm(3 votes)
- what was alive first dinosaurs or birds?(2 votes)
- Dinosaurs, i should think. If birds came first, I should think dinosaurs would be alive instead of birds today.(2 votes)
- What is the silliest or funniest name ever given to a dinosaur species?(1 vote)
- Only experts will get why I chose these as hilarious (one of them is just my opinion)
-Irritator challengeri
-Tianchisaurus nedegoapeferima
-Drinker nisti
-(not a dinosaur) Arambourgiania philidelphiae
-(not a dinosaur) Basilosaurus cetoides
-Scelidosaurus harrisonii
-Pantydraco cauducus
-one of the synonyms for Tarbosaurus bataar is Jenghizkhan
-Kol lol
-Anzu wyliei (Chicken from Hell)
-Alectrosaurus olseni
-Beelzebufo ampinga (not a dinosaur)
-(not a dinosaur) Entelodonts (Pigs from Hell)
Some prehistoric animals with funny names just to name a few.(1 vote)
- 0:51doesn't Tyrannosaurus mean tyrant lizard?(2 votes)
Video transcript
Dinosaurs get their names because paleontologists give them their names. We name dinosaurs all the time and you know there's just different conventions
people have different styles. Some of these complex dinosaur names we know just roll
off the tongue of little kids but how did they get those names? There's a nomenclature and there are rules to that nomenclature that require every dinosaur, in fact every
organism, name to have two separate names. The first is the genus name, and it's always
capitalized like Tyrannosaures. Rex is the species name that follows, in other
words there's a particular species of
Tyrannosaurus called Tyrannosaurus rex. Now these names kind of came from Latin
or Greek words. Tyrannosaurus means terrible lizzard and they can either describe some anatomical characteristic of the
dinosaur, like triceratops, it's named after the three horns on top of his
head. Or they can be names that honor someone; maybe the
person who collected a lot of dinosaurs. Sometimes dinosaurs are named afterwhere they're found like Edmontosaurus is good example, it means it's from near Edmonton in Canada.
Traditionally in the old days almost every dinosaur ended in "saurus" so we
have, you know Edmontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Albertosaurus. That sort of changed a little bit. One of the things that we regularly do now is we name dinosaurs that are found in China have the suffix long. l o n g so like, Guanlong, Khunglong. Long means dragon in Mandarin. And
this is kind of how these dinosaurs get their names. they're not simply meaningless, but they're either
describing some aspect of the animal, where it was found, or someone that was
important in its discovery. And we have a lot of these examples in
the dinosaur halls here at AMNH.