Taxonomy is like India. Your classification depends entirely on who you were born to.
6. Turdus - “Thrush”
Turdus is a modern genus of thrushes, which includes the American Robin. One theory is that these birds migrated to Earth from Uranus.
5. Erectopus - “Upright Foot”
No, it’s not a particularly horny type of cephalopod. Erectopus was a theropod dinosaur, and a close relative of Megalosaurus. Apparently, genetalia-related names run in the family: the first dinosaur bone ever scientifically described was a femur fragment of Megalosaurus, which one geologist thought looked like a pair of testicles. He named it Scrotum humanum, and if not for a small loophole in the rules of taxonomic nomenclature, poor Megalosaurus would have been stuck with that name for good.
4. Irritator - “Irritator”
Irritator was a smaller relative of the infamous Spinosaurus. When paleontologists first got their hands on the then-unidentified dinosaur skull, they found that it had been altered by fossil dealers in order to make it look more complete. This irritated them so much that they named it Irritator.
3. Pantydraco - “Dragon of Pant-y-ffynnon”
Pantydraco was an early relative of the giant sauropod dinosaurs like Apatosaurus. Its name was supposed to refer to the Welsh fossil bed where it was first discovered, but it ended up sounding more like a Harry Potter slashfic.
2. Pederpes - “Peter’s Foot”
What do you get when you cross a pedophile and herpes? Pederpes, of course! This unfortunately-named tetrapod was among the first vertebrates to leave the water and walk on land.
1. Amorphophallus - “Malformed Penis”
The previous entries on this list only sounded like dirty or funny words, but this one literally means FUCKED-UP DICK. Also known as the “corpse flower”, one species of Amorphophallus is that flower you’ve heard of before that only blooms once a year, and when it does, it smells like a rotting corpse. It’s also one of the largest flowers in the world, making it a GIANT, SMELLY, FUCKED-UP DICK.
(reblogging because apparently the tags didn’t work -.-)
(Source: kororaa)
Just a quick doodle, for my own reference & understanding as much as anything. I’d like to make a more complete one including ray-finned fish, lobe-finned fish, frogs, salamanders, caecillians, paleognath birds, galoanseriform birds, neoaves birds, and a bunch more placental mammals (and drawings that took more than 10 seconds each).
