Re: CHAT Almost well-formed southern ape (wasRe: Teknonyms)
From: | Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> |
Date: | Monday, October 31, 2005, 22:43 |
Quoting R A Brown <ray@...>:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm back now in the UK and on list. I meant to post the following before
> my short sojourn in France:
>
> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> > R A Brown skrev:
> [snip]
> >> _australis_ "southern" is a perfectly good Latin adjective. But if
> >> this were a properly formed Latin compound, it would be
> >> 'Australipithecus' "southern ape".
> >>
> >> Sigh.
> >>
> >
> > "Notiopithecus" had not only been perfect Greek, it had also
> > precluded the notion that the critter lived in Australia!
>
> One would think the epithet 'africanus' would, er, a sort of gives away
> its habitat.
Well, that's fine for Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis, A. bahrelghazali
and A. aethiopicus, but not for A. anamensis, A. robustus, A. garhi, and A.
boisei.
(The splittists would place aethiopicus, robustus, and boisei in the separate
genus Paranthropus.)
Andreas
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