The “business end” of a Stegosaur’s tail has a name. Do you know what it is?
Apparently, it’s called a Thagomizer.
Image source: Wikipedia (Image:Stego-marsh-1896-US_geological_survey.jpg).
3 thoughts on “What do you call this thing?”
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Worth a note: the first (but not last) species named in the honor of Gary Larson was a variety of sucking louse. He was supposedly rather proud of that.
Paleontologists are unfortunately prone to the adoption of silly terminology whenever given the opportunity (e.g., ‘Elvis’ taxa, species or genera which resemble a different taxon which has already gone extinct – which is to say, impersonators). Which reminds me to propose ‘thingamajig’, ‘whatchamacallit’, and ‘doohickey’ first chance I get!
— Dave
One of my favorite Far Side Cartoons… caveman presenter addressing an audience with the slide of the Stegosaurus up. Caveman says, "This end is called the Thagomizer, after the late Thag Simmons."
Did Paleontologists adopt thagomizer as a real term?
Apparently so!
(See the wikipedia article linked above for more detail.)
—
Windell H. Oskay
drwho(at)evilmadscientist.com
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/