16 October 2007

A Mighty, Twelve Inch Dinosaur?

I couldn't figure out why they had given a newly discovered dinosaur in the titanosaurian class the name, Fut-a-long-kosaurus, until I realized that I had mistakenly switched two letters, and that its name was actually:

Futalognkosaurus

I puzzled only briefly over possible Greek roots before I read on and discovered that the name is derived not from Greek but from Mapudungu, a dialect of the Patagonia region of Argentina.

And yet it turns out that the name in that dialect, despite the spelling. is indeed pronounced Foot-a-long-o-saurus!

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