As with other types of organism (including all plants and animals),
dinosaurs are
classified using the standard biological
classification
system (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species).
The smallest unit of this system is the "species", which represents
a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile
offspring, in other words, a particular "type" of animal.
Individual species of dinosaur (just like other organisms) are named
using a naming system known as "binomial nomenclature" (sometimes also
known as "binary nomenclature"). In this system, individual species are identified
using a two part name consisting of the genus name, and a second word identifying
a species within the genus.
Some examples of scientific names of dinosaur species include
"Tyrannosaurus rex",
"Stegosaurus armatus"
and
"Allosaurus fragilis".
As you may notice, in many cases, the genus names of dinosaurs
(a genus may of course contain several species),
such as
"Stegosaurus"
and
"Allosaurus",
are often more familiar than the names of individual species.
The exotic sounding words used in these names are usually derived
from ancient Greek or Latin. So, for example
"Tyrannosaurus" means "tyrant lizard", "rex" means "king", and hence
"Tyrannosaurus rex"
means "Tyrant lizard king". The particular words used, are chosen by the
scientist who first discovers or
describes the species, but their choice of name must be first approved by
the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature before it becomes
official.
One unusual situation that may arise is if
scientists chose different names
for different
fossils of the same animal,
because they don't realize that they are in fact examples of the same
animal (this is more common than you might expect - remember
scientists are often working with
only partial skeletons). In this case, the first chosen name is said to
have "priority", and usually becomes the official name.
A particularly well-known example of this type of naming conflict
is
"Apatosaurus"
versus
"Brontosaurus".
Othniel C. Marsh
found a juvenile animal specimen in 1877 and named it
"Apatosaurus ajax".
He later found another animal specimen in 1879 and named it
"Brontosaurus excelsus". However, it was only realized many years later
(in 1903
by Elmer Riggs) that the two in fact were closely related, and arguably members
of the same genus
(some scientists, including
Robert T. Bakker,
still believe they should be
classified as separate genera).
The list of dinosaur names runs to several hundred genera, and since
some genera contain several distinct species, the list of dinosaur species,
runs to many hundreds. The list of dinosaur names is also aways expanding
as
fossils
from new species and genera are coming to light all the time.
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