Title: Re: paleonet Tusoteuthis longa or
longus?
At 14.16 -0500 2004-07-11, Mike Everhart wrote:
I have a question regarding a spelling
change in the name of a
Cretaceous squid from the Western Interior Sea.
Logan (1898, p. 497) described and named the Niobrara squid,
_Tusoteuthis longus_.
Since then, Miller (1968), Stewart (1976), Nicholls and Isaak
(1987),
Stewart (1990), Stewart and Carpenter (1990) and others have used
the
species name “_longa_”
Any idea what happened? A gender issue in Latin? Is it
explained
anywhere?
It doesn't look like a spelling change, just a change of an
adjectival ending. Greek teuthis (squid) is feminine in gender.
Latin longus (long) is an adjective. A species-group name that
is an adjective or participle in the nominative singular must agree in
gender with the generic name (ICZN 31.2), thus Tusoteuthis
longa (unless Logan intended longus to be something else
than the Latin adjective and spelled that out in his original
publication).
Stefan
--
Stefan Bengtson
Senior Curator & Deputy Chairman
Department of Palaeozoology
Swedish Museum of Natural History
Box 50007
SE-104 05 Stockholm
Sweden
tel. +46-8 5195 4220
+46-8 732 5218 (home)
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e-mail stefan.bengtson@nrm.se