Re: dracrorex and National Geographic

[Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu>]

Sorry to toot my pedantic little horn once again, but even if 
_Dracorex_ is a real taxon, it should really be amended to _D. 
hogwartsius_:  the -i suffix makes the specific epithet an adjective, 
which needs to agree with the explicitly masculine genus name.

I agree that from what little I've seen, _D._ would make good sense as 
a juvie _Pachycephalosaurus_.  I'd be a little more surprised if 
_Stygimoloch_ were part of the mix, too, what with its longer spikes 
and narrow dome.

--Nick Pharris

Quoting "Jerry D. Harris" <jharris@dixie.edu>:

> > I just saw this month's National Geographic magazine. Isn't it a tad
> embarrassing to see "Dracorex hogswartsia" on the cover, and in the article?:
> when "Dracorex" was recently outed (along with "Stygiomoloch") as 
> growth stages
> of Pachycephalosaurus (Horner et al, SVP2007): not even mentioned in the
> article. I find it pretty surprising that National Geographic would sit so
> behind the times like this.
>
>    Since it's not a news magazine and therefore isn't really expected 
> to update itself merely days before hitting print, I suspect that 
> _NGM_ gets its articles lined up for future issues several months in 
> advance.  Thus, I suspect that the "Bizarre Dinosaurs" article was 
> written and laid out before SVP came around.  I know for certain that 
> at least one NG person was at the meeting, but I don't know that said 
> person had any power to change the article after the meeting (if 
> indeed said person saw Horner's talk -- I myself missed it).  Maybe 
> the talk wasn't reported.  Maybe it was, but the editors said "Too 
> late to change it."  Maybe the editors said "We could change it, but 
> that's the kind of thing that would require some discussion and we 
> don't have room for that."  Who knows?  I agree it would have been 
> nice to have the newest, most up-to-date info in the article, but 
> given the nature of the magazine, I'm not positive that was 
> feasible...just a happenstance of poor timing -- if SVP had been a 
> few months earlier, or the _NGM_ article a few months later, I bet 
> the change would have been in there.
>
>    Plus, as Tom said, it was an _abstract_, not a published paper 
> (although, like Tom, I think argument is an interesting and good 
> one!).  I myself am very curious about what function the 
> supratemporal fenestrae served in juveniles that could afford to be 
> lost in adults, which would be the case if _Dracorex_ really is a 
> juvenile _Pachycephalosaurus_.  I'm also curious about whether Horner 
> et al. discussed sexual dimorphism as a possibility for 
> _Pachycephalosaurus_ and _Stygiomoloch_.