What dinosaur names literally mean
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- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
- Enjoy this exploration of where dino names come from! Want to learn about your own history? Sign up for a 14-day free trial and enjoy all of MyHeritage's amazing features. If you decide to continue your subscription, you’ll get a 50% discount. Use this link: bit.ly/RobWords
In this video, let's explore the stories behind the names of the world's favourite dinosaurs. Which dinos are the "roof lizard", "egg thief", "chicken mimic" and "arm lizard"? Watch to find out!
By the way, this is a great companion of you're into Life On Our Planet on Netflix.
#etymology #lifeonourplanet #dinosaurs
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==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Introduction
0:34 What "Dinosaur" means
1:54 MyHeritage
3:18 Dinosaur categories
3:36 THEROPODS: T-rex, Velociraptor, Gallimimus etc.
8:45 SAUROPODS: Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Brontosaurus etc.
11:40 CERAPODS: Triceratops, Styracosaurus, Hadrosaurs, Pachycephalosaurs
14:27 THYREOPHORANS: Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus
15:15 Names after places
16:25 NON-DINOSAURS: Pterosaurs, Plesiosaurs & Ichthyosaurs
17:35 DINO TEST - Zábava
Sign up for a 14-day free trial and enjoy all of MyHeritage's amazing features. If you decide to continue your subscription, you’ll get a 50% discount. Use this link: bit.ly/RobWords
Cool video Rob; hop that you enjoy your time.
Are you working at DW?
jeromefitzroy only consults or presents a few shows.
I suppose more like contractual (project based) work and not salaried permanent employment
All well and good, but I can't see anywhere where it says how much a subscription actually costs! Even if there's a 50% discount, it may be outside my budget.
It's great to turn on the news and hear a voice so recognizable. Great work, well done - a collegue! 😅
Shoutouts to everyone else who was obsessed with dinosaurs at a young age and knew many of these names by heart
Hell yeah
Other kids had baseball cards or football cards, I had dinosaur collector's cards.
Everyone goes through a dinosaur phase, my nephew is currently going through his at 4 years old so I'll definitely be showing him this video!
@@Zerbeysome of us never grow out of it
It is often like computer problems. If unsure how to pronounce a dinosaur name, ask a grade 4 student. My dinosaur stage is still going in my 50s. Like a magnet in a museum for me.
James Gurney comments on the Oviraptor misunderstanding in _Dinotopia,_ proposing the alternate name "Ovinutrix" or "Egg Nurse".
The original Oviraptor specimen itself was likely guarding a nest.
I always liked the Dinotopia solution to this.
The fact that birds are technically dinosaurs is weird, but what's crazy is that there are bird hipped dinosaurs and lizard hipped dinosaurs, and the birds come from the latter!
Yes. Bird-hipped but also "lizard-footed"! No wonder why my love for science never translated to excellent grades in school ;-)
It's not so much a technicality as it it reality. Modern birds are in the manoraptoran family of theropods which includes troodontids and dromeosaurs (commonly knows as the raptors).
Yeah, I blame the fact that common language is all about paraphyletic nomenclature while actual biology is about monophyletic. ;) @@jasonseigfried8941
Yeah, I was waiting for a mention after "bird-hipped" of "I know I just said birds are dinosaurs, but they're not descended from this branch, they just later independently developed this kind of hips."
It's also interesting that birds are dinosaurs and not pterosaurs.
I absolutely love how you designed each dinosaur to appear like a Pokémon card complete with strength ratings!! LOL!!!! Another first rate video!!!!
Anyone else feeling old after reading this comment and remembering Quartets?
@@bliktoren No, I'm feeling old after Rob talking about using MyHeritage to find out his great-grandfather lived in America in.... 1940. Like, my father was getting ready to go fight in WWII at that point, most of my great-grandfathers were already dead (one of them by the Great Flu of 1918).
Trumps Cards.
My dad was a soldier in WWII. He'd have been 105 now, if he was still alive! My mother was also serving, but nearer the end.
There was a Permian Dicynodont which was called Bulbasaurus Phylloxyron - (Bulbous Reptile Leaf Razor) in 2017. It's not a dinosaur though - it's a mammal ancestor. The paleontologists that named this beastie said that any similarity between Bulbasaurus and the similarly named Pokémon '...may not have been entirely coincidental'.
The interesting thing is that all the -saur suffix are translated as XX龍(-dragon) in Chinese. So instead of calling dinosaur "Terrible Lizards" we call them "Terrible Dragons".
Now I'm curious what the Chinese word for dracorex would be lol
@@user-ld9tf4td8s "Dragon King Dragons"
"Thagomzer" is my absolute favorite term associated with dinosaurs. Because it was invented by Gary Larson in "The Far Side" comics and the adopted by actual scientists who loved the comics.
Minor spelling mistake there. It's Thagomizer.
Three cheers for the great paleontologist, Thag the caveman
No mention of the magasauras - the dino with piles, or the sneaky dijathinkhesaurus...
I'm terribly disappointed that among the various dinosaur-related words you discussed, you missed out on the most amusing one of all: the thagomizer!
Thanks for this comment. It led me to read up on the term. Wikipedia says it comes from a Far Side cartoon panel, and that the creator, Gary Larson, lamented he had committed the mistake of depicting hominids and dinos in the same drawing. But I don't see the problem with that, if we assume it was an archaeology lecture instead of a lesson about wildlife of their present.
It's cool that the word is common in informal use by scientists to describe the tail configuration!
There are so many things that intrigue me about about the British accent. I always wonder where the TU pronunciation came from, that to my ears sounds more like “CHEW-der” than Tudor. Also, the pronunciation of the letter “R” in many speakers sounds to me more like a “W.” Many sound to me as though they are pronouncing “Tyrannosaurus Rex” more like “tywannoso-wus Wex.” Which of course always reminds me of the “mawwiage” guy in The Princess Bride.
@@luannnelson547 British person here. A simplified explanation is that we pronounce the u in some words like the letter itself (you), so tudor would be you-der but with a t in front. When you say it quickly, and with an accent, it just becomes chuder.
@@luannnelson547Tudor is an unusual one, as it comes from the Welsh 'Tudur'.
@@luannnelson547Also worth noting, there isn't a British accent, there are loads of different ones, varying town to town. :-)
In Queensland, AUS. at a town called Muttaburra, a fossil dino. was discovered and called a Muttaburrasaurus. See the exhibit in the Queensland Museum, Brisbane.
I hope to … someday.
lol that's a fun name to a Finn
mutta=but
burra (actually purra)=bite
but to bite saur
I spent years working at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science's Prehistoric Journey-its history of life exhibit-at a station called the Bone Bar where visitors could touch real dinosaur bones. One of my favorite names is Stygimoloch which were found in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana. The name blends the River Styx and the word moloch, meaning demon or beast. But having been found at Hell Creek, this wonderful sounding name, Stygimoloch, devolves to the rather prosaic "the beast/critter we found at Hell Creek." Sadly, this name along with the smaller Dracorex (the Dragon king) are found to be juvenile synonyms of Pachycephalosaurus, because they have been determined to be the subadult and juvenile forms, respectively, of the adult Pachycephalosaurus. What were three species end up be growth stages of the same species.
As a Greek i find it fascinating how easy these names are to understand and pronounce. And I'm not sure why Diplodokos is that hard for you to read, for us it is too straight forward and can be easily used in a sentence :) Keep up the good work!
I love that the expert in the Latin names of dinosaurs has a Latin name. Cassius!
I'm from a small town in the US Midwest. where I learned to pronounce diplodocus as "DIP low dock cuss."
Here's a thought for you... In terms of time, the T-rex is closer to humans (65 million years) than it was to Stegosaurus (145+ million years ago)
Coupled with Cleopatra being closer to the iPhone than the building of the Pyramids, and Oxford University being older than the Aztecs.
Also, in terms of length of existence, we are basically the after credits scene in the story of the Dinosaur Earth.
In the context of time from the big bang to the heat death of the universe, the universe has existed for less than 0.00000000001% of that time so far. Even to the last star in 100 trillion years, the universe has only been around for 0.0013% of that time so far. Time is insane when put into context.
@@RCassinelloOxford is not just older than the Aztec Empire, but that by over 300 years.....
@@RCassinello it would probably be less confusing if you interacted more with Oxford as I can imagine it's basically a museum.
My favourite is pygmy mammoths still existing when the pyramids were built and the Romans bringing lions from EUROPE to the colosseums
This was such a fun video! When my son was very young, he loved dinosaurs. As his father and I have science backgrounds, our son was taught the scientific names of these amazing creatures. He might have been the only 3 year old in the neighborhood who could say "parasaurolophus". I wonder if he remembers his dinosaur days? 😊🦕
Good way to reconnect...
Hey Rob, great video. I'm surrounded by dinosaurs every day in our lab, and I'm glad you made this one as people are always asking me what the names mean. Happy to see you included Edmontosaurus, Pachyrhinosaurus which have a lot of around Edmonton and in northern Alberta. If you are ever visiting on this side of the pond stop by Edmonton and I'll introduce you to a few more of our residents such as Saurornitholestes langstoni (we have the most complete skeleton in the world over here).
Keep up the good work, I also really like your newsletter, very informative.
I'm also surrounded by dinosaurs every day, when I fetch the eggs from the coop.
@@ofsinope Yeah, I love to see the faces of the school children when they tour our lab and we tell them that birds and dinosaurs share a common relative.
As somebody who figured out how monophyly vaguely worked in, maybe middle school, but doesn't meet enough people to bother talking about it, it always breaks my brain a little to remember how infrequently most people understand it and how much you have to explain from the ground up to help people understand. Birds must be reptiles in order for reptile to mean anything true about the animal family tree!
The etymology for Xenoceratops is fascinating. The initial drawings made based on the bones were by Mark Schultz, creator of Xenozoic Tales aka Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. The paleontologist who named it wanted to slip in Xeno- as a fan of the comic author's work.
Sauroposeidon is one of my new favorite dinosaur names I didn't know as a kid. On one hand I wish I had access to the internet as a kid, on the other hand not so much.
It’s also one of my favorite dinosaurs because of how ridiculously tall it is.
@@jurassicswine- We think it is, it is relatively incomplete, so the exact height is unknown.
@@f.u.m.o.5669 true, but there’s no denying whatever those fragments belonged to is enormous. Most giant sauropods are very fragmentary, Dreadnoughtus is the only one that comes to mind which is decently complete.
@@jurassicswineHow vertical the neck was held would also contribute to height. I am inclined to think it held its neck at 45°. .
@@f.u.m.o.5669 sauropod neck posture is a whole debate in and of itself. Almost if not all reconstructed Sauroposeidon I’ve seen have it holding its neck vertically; since brachiosaurids seem to be the main inspiration for it.
I keep thinking that one day you will run out of incredibly interesting ways to teach us about language but you prove me wrong every time ❤
I'll keep trying!
I love these videos!! Used to have an amazing book called The Loom of Language, and it gave me a real sense of how our language has evolved; I also studied Latin for two years as I wanted to be a doctor and knew that most medical terms are latin based... But here we are with a wonderful vid on not only language, but also a really good insight into the biology and evolution/diversification of dinosaurs!! Absolutely loving your videos, mate, keep on keeping on x
I had that book, too!!
Thank you!
I have that book!
Such a good read 😮
@@RobWordsI have become a robwordsoholic by now. ❤
Finally, an xlnt explanation of dino names. As an uneducated person, I have been guessing at the names for years and often thought a parenthetical
translation should always accompany the scientific names of these fascinating creatures.
The scientific name for bats is chiroptera or hand wing... also not dinosaurs! 🤣 Love these longer form videos... and am enjoying your newsletter!
A very teeny tiny quibble - flying or swimming doesn't immediately disqualify something as a dinosaur. The entire bird line and their immediate predecessors in the non avian dinosaurs fly (or possibly fall with style).
It's a very very good rule of thumb (as long as you keep remembering the exception for the birds and their relatives) because the pterosaurs (the ones we usually think of as "flying dinosaurs") simply aren't descended from the mutual ancestor of the lizard hipped and bird hipped dinosaurs. They're a cousin, and closer related to dinosaurs than either are to crocodiles, but pterodactyls and crocodiles still aren't dinosaurs. Just related.
The variety of reptiles that were at least as adapted to the water as a sea otter are in the same situation, they're just not descended from the same ancestor as the two lines of dinosaurs are. They're much more distantly related however - some of them might be closer related to lizards and snakes, some are representatives of totally extinct lines of reptiles.
But we could find a dinosaur-descended thing that lived like a seal one day. It wouldn't get voted off the dinosaur island for being aquatic, because "dinosaur" refers to descent, not just to a description.
Excellent explanation, Emily. Thanks.
Just to add to this: dinosaurs, crocodiles, pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and pliosaurs are all archosaurs (ancient lizards), despite none of them being lizards. 😉
@@WaterShowsProd mosasaurs are not archosaurs, rather they are lepidosaurs (scaly lizards), more specifically squamates, commonly referred to as lizards. Yes, mosasaurs were indeed lizards, in fact the biggest lizards ever!
@@billyr2904 Oh, thanks. I wasn't aware of that.
@@billyr2904 Yes, mososaurs are marine Komodo dragons (kind of!). Ichthyosaurs (Ichthyopterygia) and plesiosaurs & pliosaurs (Sauropterygia) weren’t archosaurs either. 🐜
This was a mega 'saurus of dinosaur words! thanks for the trial o' bytes of information!
😅
I have no background in linguistics but still find your videos very enjoyable. Keep up the great work!
when being a paleo nerd subscribed to a linguistics channel suddenly pays off
this is awesome, thanks so much
I credit Tom Scott for getting me here and other readings. I follow a few dino blogs and podcasts. Double hit today.
Shoutout to everyone who liked dinosaurs as a kid. Good video Rob!
What a great upload Rob but you said we can't have an English word that starts with PT.....
what about Ptarmigan? 😮😅
The vowels in _Diplodocus_ are all short in Greek, so because the penult lacks a long vowel or multiple following consonants, the English stress would fall on the antepenult: di-PLO-do-cus.
Thank you for this information. I have long pronounced Diplodocus in a "Greek way", but was open to correction. It's nice to know that my first inclination of how to pronounce this word has some academic basis. My professors will be pleased.
From my first dinosaur book in the '50s', I also pronounced it: dip LO docus. I never imagined it was different until well after college graduation.
There are also an ancient amphibian named Diplocaulus, Its head is shaped weird.
@@zycloack8124 in which case the penult is a diphthong, and thus long, and therefore becomes the stressed syllable : di-pluh-KAW-lus.
and here I have been calling it di-plo-DO-cus all my life. Sorry Dino
My favorite is the Fuk-U-Thief 😂
I enjoyed that, Rob. Thank you for sharing 🌞
As someone who is owned by a very small dinosaur (AKA a parrot), i thoroughly enjoyed this video :) i also keep tropical fish; their names are worth a look; they are sometimes useful, but more often than not just baffling! There's a South American cichlid called Heros severus 'severe hero', I mean, what!?
Just as pleased to find out about Helicopter as the Dinosaurs :)
Just a quick aside. The late Sir Terry Pratchett had fun with the "pt" at the beginning of words, in particular names, in his Discworld novel Pyramids. I was especially amused by the girl's name, Ptraci.
Hello from another Kevin
7:46 Just finished reading "The Lost World" by Michael Crichton yesterday, and I couldn't get over how cute some of the descriptions of the dinosaurs' behaviours were. At one point, a character even mentions how the Maiasaura was literally named "Good parent", as he looks at them lovingly and meticulously caring for their eggs 🥺
The editing is spot on. Whoever is the editor needs to be well acclaimed.
Thank you!
Well, Rob is the editor, i assume.
Hi Rob. I never thought of words and their true meanings until I went to agricultural college and had to identity trees in an exam by only their Latin or Greek names.
Latin seemed easier to remember as some of the meanings are similar to this day.
One of my favourite trees are the hazel " Corylus Avellana contorta" = corkscrew hazel.
I could go on, but botanical/ scientific names are my go to and history behind it all ( I'm a gardener) and how loads of plant species are related but don't look similar ( brassicas) etc, and I find the language more fascinating than some of the plants 😆
I sent my daughter your way on your Germanic videos. She was doing an OU language A level course which she passed, you helped and she has furthered her career ( she is 30) she did 3 languages at the same time, german,Swedish and Spanish. Her party trick is if you say a word, she will tell you how the word came about and it's meaning.......so thanks Rob 👏👏
Thank you! This was great! I’m going to share with my grandsons. ❤
I discovered a mightysaurus after sitting on a cactus but that didn't swell as much as my brain does after one of your videos! Thank you, I learned a lot from this 🙂
I love the extra little word plays you put in your videos - "my throat is getting dino-sore".. Not just a pun, but a little bit of extra cleverness there too
..and there ARE words in English that start with PT.
How about Ptenisnet. Derived from Ancient Egyptian, I believe.
But as my Dad says, "The P is silent, as in 'Bath'".
I like that the expert scientist used the word "ginormous" -- seems to fit with the general descriptivist vibe of the channel where language that is successful in converying an idea is always valid! Another awesome video overall, Rob.
As always, extremely interesting, entertaining and charming
Thanks Renata!
I think that, for the alliteratively-minded, another good translation for Velociraptor would be "swift snatcher"
Always a lot of good really old fun Rob; thank you.
Great job as always!
Love the way you linked the meaning of Greco- Roman root words to the evolutionary family tree nomenclature of Dinosaurs.
Thank you so much for this video!! And I loved doing the dino test at the end!!
I initially clicked on this video for some background noise, but it grabbed my full attention! It's so lovely to hear someone talk about something he's very knowledgeable and passionate about, and in turn seeing someone just as excited to learn from him!
Greek here. I am pretty sure the word "pod" (foot) is not of latin origin but is related to the word "pus" (foot in ancient Greek, "podi" in modern Greek). For example: Platypus which means "flatfoot"
Great episode! ❤
Great vid! Love when you bring in other people to talk to too!
I really enjoy your videos! Thank you!
You didn't mention the cool story of why the bones on the end of a Stegosaurus' tail are now called a Thagomizer.
Explained here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer
It was such a missed opportunity, and an entomology that I think Rob would have found amusing.
@@BryTee Maybe someday Rob will discuss the etymology of "entomology".
@@allendracabal0819 Hopefully not. It'd be a one word video: typo
However, there are probably a lot of words used today that come from typo's. One I know of is "Alumimum" used in the USA vs "Aluminium" used everywhere else.
Originally the mineral alumina the element was named alumium in 1807 by English chemist Sir Humphry Davy, then he did use aluminum, but by 1812 had settled on aluminium. However in 1828 Noah Webster put Alumium in his dictionary, probably a typo. Aluminium was used in most publications for the rest of the century. But in the first few years of 1900 when Aluminum (believed due to Websters dictionary) became more popular in American publications. Despite all other chemists in the world using Aluminium, in 1925 the American Chemical Society officially adopted Aluminum.
"Do you know that guy?"
"Oh yeah that's Old Horn Face."
Dinosaurs fascinate me.. as do Rob Words.. 😁 so this is a perfect combination! 👍
I'm very much enjoying the Rob Words newsletter too..
Great video ... thank you for posting.
12:36 "Well, look at it." 😄
Very interesting. This summer I will ask my,nephew about this as it used to be one of his favourite areas of interest when he started being an elementary school kid. He might still find this interesting.
Loved the quiz segment! Please keep doing those in future videos!
Each time with Rob you learn something new! As a child I had a plastic toy Spinosaurus, and have always wondered where that name came from.
I wondered about Styracosaurus, when I first came across the beastie. I imagined the "Styra" came from the same root as "styrene", so for ages I wondered why they called it "Plastic lizard"
Perfect timing! I'll actually be going to the Natural History Museum on Monday to see the Titanosaur exhibition!
Have fun! I went once but stayed for like 4 hours and have memorized the layout.
That was so much fun! I so enjoyed it and wish it had been longer!
Thanks, Rachael!
I love your channel, Rob. Stay awesome, bro!!
Thanks, Willy!
My love of dinosaurs since childhood actually helped me when i learned italien but also to better understand technical terms and foreign words of greek/latin origin that found the way into my mother language german.
J’adore le ton « so british » Très bon travail Merci pour le partage
Another great video... Except... I can't believe the Thagomizer didn't get a mention!
Two of my favourite things in one video! I would have loved to see Colepiocephale mentioned too, it's a fun one
Highly enjoyable once again. Thanks :)
I love the birds are dinosaurs fact and how it pisses off some people who don't understand taxonomy or the concept of complex definitions or belonging to multiple classifications.
Agreed. Although "non-avian dinosaur" is rather cumbersome and in most common usage unnecessary. Like fish is not a taxonomic group but its pretty clear concept of a group of animals.
I love it, especially when I tell people that a T-Rex sound was probably closer to a duck than a lion.
Yeah it sometimes gets a bit frustrating to explain, but that’s science for ya.
Similarly, insects are actually a subgroup of crustaceans.
My favorite dinosaur name is _Zuul crurivastator,_ meaning _Zuul, destroyer of shins._ 😅
Zuul is the demon in Ghostbusters, and destroyer of shins, well it's an ankylosaur with a massive tail club.
That's wonderful.
This video was awesome!
Love this vlog. Right up there with banned books. Keep 'em coming.
Interesting video Rob 👍👍
Great episode! -and probably best you left out the Notatesseraeraptor ;-)
Very nice video !
I was baffled by the "Cera" part. Tri-cera-tops, Rhino-ceros, ... Awesome !
Always interesting! I havent been disappointed yet!
"Diplodocus" is from "διπλοῦς δοκός", and since it's "δοκος" not "δωκος", the "o" in "do" is short, thus the syllable is light, and the stress (by Latin, not Greek, rules) is on "plo".
One of those dino names has "noto" in it. This can mean either "back" or "south", and it makes a difference in the pronunciation. "Νοτος" is "south" and "νωτον" is "back". Camponotus (an ant, not a dino) is "bendy back", so it's "Camponōtus", with the stress on the long ō.
Another delightful video, thanks, Rob. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
The hadrosaurus is actually named for Haddonfield NJ, where they were first found.
That was great. Thanks!
Great vid! Side note, Hadrosaurus should be moved to the "named after the place it was discovered" category. While it may be big, it's named after Haddonfield, NJ where it was found.
I nicknamed my son as Nottiosaurus, after Northosaurus. He was obsessed with dinosaurs and their names as a toddler.
Excellent mini course! 🙏☮️
That was the cutest asteroid I have ever seen! 11/10 wish it would come again.
"Deceptive Lizard" thanks that's my band name now
Last time i was this early, dinosaurs still roamed the earth
😅
I’ve just got to say this is an absolutely cracking video, Rob. First: dinosaurs, what’s not to like? But, second: your production techniques are cracking in this one. Loved the little animations and cards etc. Great job!
Thank you so much! Glad to hear it's appreciated 🙂
I just can't believe he missed a chance to mention the Stegosaurus's Thagomizer.
I just looked it up oh my goodness its incredible
WOOT WOOT!! 4/4 on the Dino Quiz!! 😊
Thank you!
"My vocal chords are getting Dino sore" was a great finish.
My faves have always been Iguanodon and Patasaurolophus. 😊
What intrigues me about dinos is how many more species are known now than in the 70s when I was mad keen on them...
Absolutely entertaining and interesting! Did like Dino-wino ! Cheers!
Insightful and funny as usual! 🎉
Dinosaurs and their names are so fun. Awesome video!
Will you be doing any more animal genus/species names? (extinct or extant)?
Yes, there is surely a video in that somewhere! Need to mine for some good examples.
LOVED THIS VIDEO
Anyone has been chased by an angry goose probably has a good idea of what a velociraptor would have been like.
Check out a cassowary, those things are modern day dinosaurs, no imagination needed.
Yeah I love it when people say feathered dinosaurs aren’t scary but are mortified of geese
"In English no word starts with pt". I suppose ptarmigan might be a bit of a stretch, since it is from the Scottish Gaelic 'tarmachan'. Hmmm.
As usual... or perhaps more so... you've given us an informative and enjoyable look into the world of dinosaurs. Thankyou, Rob.
Two of my favourite niches! Language & dinosaurs! (archosaurs, really, 'cause I like the non-dinos too)
Dinosaurs are always fun :) thank you for sharing