Regarding the Cretaceous Era:
Funnily enough, I actually got more information from being told it was {bakrycedra}. At least from that, I got that chalk is a defining characteristic of the period. Why, I have no idea, obviously. All I got from the word Cretaceous is "it was a long time ago".
On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Pierre Abbat
<phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:
On Friday 17 September 2010 11:19:55 Jonathan Jones wrote:
> So it's the "Selmes mousebird"? And I'd say the Sio is an inventive name,
> but no less a descriptive name than my eagle example.
No, it's the Selmes. The species name, "absurdipes", is a description,
but "Selmes" is just a name.
What would you accept as a non-descriptive name?
Well, the Verreaux's Eagle is the eagle discovered by Verreaux, which is a description that uniquely identifies that species of eagle, so I'd call that a descriptive name.
The Sio, I'd assume, is a species discovered by Scripps Institute of Oceanography. I can't find anything about it, although I was able to find SIO's website, so I have no idea what it is other than a guess that it's an ocean-dweller, but I'm willing to bet "Sio" is unique to that species, and is therefore a descriptive name.
I consider a descriptive name to be one which uniquely identifies a species, so I'm not even certain you'd be able to find a non-descriptive name - at least not a Linnean one.
Pierre
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