Sarahsaurus fully described

[Halichoeres]

Sarahsaurus was named in 2010 but the full description is just out now of this Lower Jurassic sauropodomorph from the Kayenta formation (Arizona portion of Navajo Nation). Check out this hand!



Paper is open access! https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0204007

[UtahraptorFan]

I've always wondered why they didn't end it with "-saura," the customary ending when the name has a girl/woman's name in it.

[Sim]

Unfortunately, I find the name given to this animal so awful it makes me almost entirely uninterested in the animal.   Is this sauropodomorph's name supposed to describe the animal or a person?  If it's meant to do the former, why is it doing the latter?

This is far from the only case where the name of a prehistoric animal basically refers to a person, but here it's just too obvious for me.  This is in contrast with Zhenyuanlong suni for example, which technically is even worse since both the genus and species parts of its name respectively refer to the name and surname of a single person.  Due to my unfamiliarity with the names that make up Zhenyuanlong suni's name though, this dromaeosaurid's name ends up not really bothering me.

The hand of Sarahsaurus (ugh, I just typed that horrible name) is interesting.  In this paper, it says the last bone of the fourth/fifth finger is a claw/ungual.  This would be further evidence that suggests a lack of claws on the fourth and fifth finger isn't quite as widespread as what has at times been expressed on the Internet.  The hands of basal sauropodomorphs are always particularly interesting!

[Ravonium]

What is it with this month and stories about dinosaurs with awful names? At least Dynamoterror took some creativity to come up with, this name just looks and sounds boring 

[Halichoeres]

Yeah, I'm not wild about the name, but we're stuck with these sorts of honorifics as long as expedition funding relies on rich benefactors who happen to take a shine to paleontology.

U @UtahraptorFan I don't think there is any rule about whether the grammatical gender of the genus name has to correspond to the honorific that it incorporates. The only time an honorific requires the grammatical gender to change is when it's in the genitive case (so, for example if the specific epithet were named after this Sarah person instead, it would be "sarahae" but not "sarahi"). That is, if the name translates as "of Sarah" or "belonging to Sarah," which in this case it doesn't. I'm not a classicist, so I could be wrong, but that's my understanding.

[Gothmog the Baryonyx]

I heard about Sarahsaurus a few months ago. I didn't know it hadn't been formally named. I'm not a big fan of the name, but I much prefer it to the awesome-bro Dynamoterror. Dinosaurs are suffering enough from awesome-bro culture, whereas this dinosaur is just named after a person. It's no worse than Martharaptor either.

[Halichoeres]

I heard about Sarahsaurus a few months ago. I didn't know it hadn't been formally named. I'm not a big fan of the name, but I much prefer it to the awesome-bro Dynamoterror. Dinosaurs are suffering enough from awesome-bro culture, whereas this dinosaur is just named after a person. It's no worse than Martharaptor either.

It had been formally named, but the original description was a little bit cursory. The current paper is much more thorough and includes an explicit phylogenetic analysis.

[CityRaptor]

I heard about Sarahsaurus a few months ago. I didn't know it hadn't been formally named. I'm not a big fan of the name, but I much prefer it to the awesome-bro Dynamoterror. Dinosaurs are suffering enough from awesome-bro culture, whereas this dinosaur is just named after a person. It's no worse than Martharaptor either.

Sarahsaurus makes me think of that scene from TLW where they are looking for Sarah Harding. Martharaptor....imaging Supersaurus calling out "MARTHARAPTOR!". But I think the worst case of a Dinosaur being named after a person is still Timimus.   

[Gothmog the Baryonyx]

I heard about Sarahsaurus a few months ago. I didn't know it hadn't been formally named. I'm not a big fan of the name, but I much prefer it to the awesome-bro Dynamoterror. Dinosaurs are suffering enough from awesome-bro culture, whereas this dinosaur is just named after a person. It's no worse than Martharaptor either.

It had been formally named, but the original description was a little bit cursory. The current paper is much more thorough and includes an explicit phylogenetic analysis.

Ah, thanks, that makes sense.

@CityRaptor I can't unsee that now.