Another Nutshell
November 11, 2008 - 9:14 pm
Irradiated by LabRat
Irradiated by LabRat
The opening paragraph of this post by John Hawks, paleoanthropology blogger extraordinaire, manages to distill basically everything I love about science and scientists into a few sentences.
Here in paleoanthropologyland, we are often subject to the whims of the nomenclatura. These folks come up with new “logical” ways to name things, and we either have to adopt the new name or risk looking like outmoded dorks. That’s more or less what has done in the term “hominid” — if you’re “with it”, you call them “hominins” instead (of interest may be my 2005 review of the hominid-hominin problem).
I doubt this will be half as delightful to you as it was to me if you aren’t of a very certain temperament, but I got a very thorough giggle out of it…
November 12th, 2008 at 6:33 am
I always say apatosaurus unless there’s a paleontologist in the room; then I’m very careful to use brontosaurus.
November 12th, 2008 at 9:30 am
It IS funny– last night there was a documentary on the “hobbits” of Flores and I found myself using the word “Hominin” to Libby. I stopped and said aloud “why did I say that? Probably entirely too much reading in evolutionary paleontology.
November 12th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Myself, I always suffer an existential dilemma anytime I talk about a certain short-statured, robust human species endemic to Northern Europe and contemporary with our own wonderful selves for a time.
Is it Neanderthal or Neandertal? H. neanderthalensis or H. sapiens neanderthalensis?
Gah!
November 12th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
My current favorite is people who go on at length over whether chimps get moved into Homo or we get bumped to Pan.