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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 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.
@@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).
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'.
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.
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!
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 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."
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.
"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.
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
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".
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.
@@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!
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? 😊🦕
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.
@@fumo-fumo-fumo 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.
@@fumo-fumo-fumo 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 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'".
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.
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.
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 🥺
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!
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 👏👏
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.
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!
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.
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.
@@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
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.
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!
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!
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.
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 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.
Allow me to add the fact that birds, the avian dinosaurs, do not stem from the Ornithischian = bird-hipped branch, but from the Saurischian = lizard-hipped branch. How that came to be is literally a very long story...
"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.
I recently watched the anime "Dinosaur King", which is basically a mix of every Shounen-series ever made (mostly Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Beyblade) and that anime had an episode about Spielberg (Well...A character who's a movie director with a noticeably similar name anyway. You know...Avoiding copyright.). He even hired an expert from a dinosaur-museum, but never listened to him because he wanted to make the dinosaurs look cool. So...I guess that's on point.
i never realized that england and america has different spellings for the various dinosaur names or their classes/scientific names. almost as interesting as hearing the difference across the pond in the pronunciation of ‘cassius’
@RobWords: At 10:20, you say that “brontosaurus and apatosaurus were coined within just a few months of each other by two scientists who basically made the same discovery.” This isn't quite right. Both brontosaurus and apatosaurus were described and named by the same scientist, Othniel Charles Marsh. Marsh was engaged in the Bone Wars with Edward Drinker Cope, so he was writing up his discoveries at a breakneck pace to ensure that he got priority, and he failed to notice the similarities between his apatosaurus and brontosaurus fossils.
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"
From watching this video I now learned the origins of the Swedish word "skräcködla" which is an alternative word for dinosaur. It's a compound word of "skräck" meaning fear or horror, and "ödla" meaning lizard. So literally "horror lizard". Very interesting. Thank you!
I love this channel! This 'dinosaur' episode will happily be shared with my adult sons who never outgrew their love of dinosaurs and other pre-historic beasts! The Dinosaur Provincial Park and Drumheller, in Alberta remain favourite family vacation spots!
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.
I really liked the visuals in this video to help illustrate the names. Another good video. I thought the brontosaurus wasn't real though? That they mixed up the skulls or something?
The skull thing is because at the time they used the skull of Camarasaurus in museum mounts. This is because sauropod skulls are delicate and so rarely fossilize, so Camarasaurus was one of the few references to go off of.
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 🙂
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.
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.
Actually, you're correct in calling dinosaurs reptiles, you just have to remember that birds are also reptiles. Both Turtles and Crocodilians are more closely related to birds than they are to lizards and snakes, so you can't really group everything we think of as reptiles together without including birds. Also, if anything, oviraptor should be called good *father*, seeing as some evidence suggests it was actually mostly the males taking care of the eggs.
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"
Did you know there is an Atlascopcosaurus "Atlascopcosaurus loadsi, was named and described by Tom Rich and Patricia Vickers-Rich in 1989. The generic name refers to the Swedish Atlas Copco Company who had provided equipment for the dig that discovered this dinosaur in 1984."
@@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.
@@BryTee The suffix ‒i‒ in 'aluminium' makes etymological sense, if only by luck. It has always been productive in Latin, forming nominals from nominals with the sense of 'being that of' in reference to both material and lineage, as in freedmen cognomina starting 1c. BCE. While originally adjectival, it nearly always causes the derivate to lose its adjectival force, as long as a substantive meaning is perceptible. _Alum_ is from L. _alumen_ via Norman Fr. with the same sense of the mineral's name. For _‒men_ in Latin, see e.g. Miller 2006, 3.4: the ending _‒men_ ceased to be productive by the time Latin separated as a language (the ~100 nouns ending in _‒men_ but wanting a doublet in _‒mentum,_ such as _nomen, stamen, alumen_ etc., are from Proto-Italic), and ultimately comes from the Late PIE nominal ending ‒mṇ. Davy originally coined _alumium_ < alum, later _aluminum_ from otherwise unattested, pseudo-Latin _*alumina,_ which his editors changed to _aluminium,_ unlikely from the considerations of correct Latin etymology but rather in line with the already established neo-Latin pattern in English: _soda‒sodium, potash‒potassium_ (both also due to Davy). This perhaps happened to be etymologically sound ('that of _alumen,_ "alum"') by pure chance. Whithersoever has the 'i' gone while crossing the pond, 'aluminum' savagely slices the petrified parent tongue fused morph ‒mṇ right in the middle _(Shudders in disgust.)._ And who'd think that 'aluminium' and 'ale' are in fact cognate words! Cheers!
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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! 😅
Rob, do you know the name for the 4 spikes on the end of a stegosaurus' tail, and its very interesting and humorous etymology?
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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
"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...
My favourite dinosaur is Kentrosaurus, which has an amazing thagomizer.
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. ❤
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
@@AllanTidgwell "Dragon King Dragons"
Leng Guangdi
same-ish in vietnamese. they call dinosaurs "khủng long", which means "terrible dragon" if translated word for word.
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!
I have no background in linguistics but still find your videos very enjoyable. Keep up the great work!
I enjoyed that, Rob. Thank you for sharing 🌞
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...
I'm from a small town in the US Midwest. where I learned to pronounce diplodocus as "DIP low dock cuss."
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.
@@fumo-fumo-fumo 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°. .
@@fumo-fumo-fumo 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 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'".
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.
Shoutout to everyone who liked dinosaurs as a kid. Good video Rob!
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. :-)
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 🥺
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 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!
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.
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 👏👏
This was a mega 'saurus of dinosaur words! thanks for the trial o' bytes of information!
😅
I love that the expert in the Latin names of dinosaurs has a Latin name. Cassius!
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. 🐜
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.
Great job as always!
As always, extremely interesting, entertaining and charming
Thanks Renata!
Thank you! This was great! I’m going to share with my grandsons. ❤
Always a lot of good really old fun Rob; thank you.
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
What a great upload Rob but you said we can't have an English word that starts with PT.....
what about Ptarmigan? 😮😅
Great vid! Love when you bring in other people to talk to too!
Thank you so much for this video!! And I loved doing the dino test at the end!!
Great episode! ❤
I really enjoy your videos! Thank you!
The editing is spot on. Whoever is the editor needs to be well acclaimed.
Thank you!
Well, Rob is the editor, i assume.
Just as pleased to find out about Helicopter as the Dinosaurs :)
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.
I love your channel, Rob. Stay awesome, bro!!
Thanks, Willy!
Loved the quiz segment! Please keep doing those in future videos!
That was so much fun! I so enjoyed it and wish it had been longer!
Thanks, Rachael!
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 🙂
The scientific name for bats is chiroptera or hand wing... also not dinosaurs! 🤣 Love these longer form videos... and am enjoying your newsletter!
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!
Love the way you linked the meaning of Greco- Roman root words to the evolutionary family tree nomenclature of Dinosaurs.
Great video ... thank you for posting.
Interesting video Rob 👍👍
Two of my favourite things in one video! I would have loved to see Colepiocephale mentioned too, it's a fun one
Very nice video !
I was baffled by the "Cera" part. Tri-cera-tops, Rhino-ceros, ... Awesome !
Another delightful video, thanks, Rob. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
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
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!?
Dinosaurs fascinate me.. as do Rob Words.. 😁 so this is a perfect combination! 👍
I'm very much enjoying the Rob Words newsletter too..
J’adore le ton « so british » Très bon travail Merci pour le partage
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
Allow me to add the fact that birds, the avian dinosaurs, do not stem from the Ornithischian = bird-hipped branch, but from the Saurischian = lizard-hipped branch. How that came to be is literally a very long story...
That was great. Thanks!
This video was awesome!
My favorite is the Fuk-U-Thief 😂
Great episode! -and probably best you left out the Notatesseraeraptor ;-)
I think that, for the alliteratively-minded, another good translation for Velociraptor would be "swift snatcher"
"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.
Thank you!
I recently watched the anime "Dinosaur King", which is basically a mix of every Shounen-series ever made (mostly Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Beyblade) and that anime had an episode about Spielberg (Well...A character who's a movie director with a noticeably similar name anyway. You know...Avoiding copyright.). He even hired an expert from a dinosaur-museum, but never listened to him because he wanted to make the dinosaurs look cool. So...I guess that's on point.
The anime used to air on TV in where I live.
Highly enjoyable once again. Thanks :)
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.
Always interesting! I havent been disappointed yet!
i never realized that england and america has different spellings for the various dinosaur names or their classes/scientific names. almost as interesting as hearing the difference across the pond in the pronunciation of ‘cassius’
@RobWords: At 10:20, you say that “brontosaurus and apatosaurus were coined within just a few months of each other by two scientists who basically made the same discovery.” This isn't quite right. Both brontosaurus and apatosaurus were described and named by the same scientist, Othniel Charles Marsh. Marsh was engaged in the Bone Wars with Edward Drinker Cope, so he was writing up his discoveries at a breakneck pace to ensure that he got priority, and he failed to notice the similarities between his apatosaurus and brontosaurus fossils.
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"
Naming the cat asteroid was a stroke of genius 😂
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.
From watching this video I now learned the origins of the Swedish word "skräcködla" which is an alternative word for dinosaur. It's a compound word of "skräck" meaning fear or horror, and "ödla" meaning lizard. So literally "horror lizard". Very interesting. Thank you!
I love this channel!
This 'dinosaur' episode will happily be shared with my adult sons who never outgrew their love of dinosaurs and other pre-historic beasts! The Dinosaur Provincial Park and Drumheller, in Alberta remain favourite family vacation spots!
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.
I really liked the visuals in this video to help illustrate the names. Another good video. I thought the brontosaurus wasn't real though? That they mixed up the skulls or something?
It's gone back to being real, I think there was more research done
The skull thing is because at the time they used the skull of Camarasaurus in museum mounts. This is because sauropod skulls are delicate and so rarely fossilize, so Camarasaurus was one of the few references to go off of.
Brontosaurus has always been real. The argument was whether it was a species of Apatosautus, or different enough to deserve its own genus.
Absolutely entertaining and interesting! Did like Dino-wino ! Cheers!
Excellent mini course! 🙏☮️
Love this vlog. Right up there with banned books. Keep 'em coming.
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 🙂
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.
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.
Actually, you're correct in calling dinosaurs reptiles, you just have to remember that birds are also reptiles. Both Turtles and Crocodilians are more closely related to birds than they are to lizards and snakes, so you can't really group everything we think of as reptiles together without including birds.
Also, if anything, oviraptor should be called good *father*, seeing as some evidence suggests it was actually mostly the males taking care of the eggs.
Came to comments basically just to say this, so thanks.
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"
Another great video... Except... I can't believe the Thagomizer didn't get a mention!
Insightful and funny as usual! 🎉
Dinosaurs are always fun :) thank you for sharing
LOVED THIS VIDEO
Did you know there is an Atlascopcosaurus
"Atlascopcosaurus loadsi, was named and described by Tom Rich and Patricia Vickers-Rich in 1989. The generic name refers to the Swedish Atlas Copco Company who had provided equipment for the dig that discovered this dinosaur in 1984."
Interesting but kind of sad fact
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
Anyone who thinks feathered dinosaurs aren't scary, has obviously never been chased by an Ostrich. -- Randall Munroe
What intrigues me about dinos is how many more species are known now than in the 70s when I was mad keen on them...
16:57 What about Ptolomy?? Some people pronounce it with a P at the start, right? I'm really not sure, and that's why I'm asking.
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.
@@BryTee The suffix ‒i‒ in 'aluminium' makes etymological sense, if only by luck. It has always been productive in Latin, forming nominals from nominals with the sense of 'being that of' in reference to both material and lineage, as in freedmen cognomina starting 1c. BCE. While originally adjectival, it nearly always causes the derivate to lose its adjectival force, as long as a substantive meaning is perceptible. _Alum_ is from L. _alumen_ via Norman Fr. with the same sense of the mineral's name. For _‒men_ in Latin, see e.g. Miller 2006, 3.4: the ending _‒men_ ceased to be productive by the time Latin separated as a language (the ~100 nouns ending in _‒men_ but wanting a doublet in _‒mentum,_ such as _nomen, stamen, alumen_ etc., are from Proto-Italic), and ultimately comes from the Late PIE nominal ending ‒mṇ.
Davy originally coined _alumium_ < alum, later _aluminum_ from otherwise unattested, pseudo-Latin _*alumina,_ which his editors changed to _aluminium,_ unlikely from the considerations of correct Latin etymology but rather in line with the already established neo-Latin pattern in English: _soda‒sodium, potash‒potassium_ (both also due to Davy). This perhaps happened to be etymologically sound ('that of _alumen,_ "alum"') by pure chance.
Whithersoever has the 'i' gone while crossing the pond, 'aluminum' savagely slices the petrified parent tongue fused morph ‒mṇ right in the middle _(Shudders in disgust.)._
And who'd think that 'aluminium' and 'ale' are in fact cognate words! Cheers!
Well, as a Greek I never wondered about dinosaur names. They were always etymologically obvious. Lucky me.
You are just so wholesome!