from the it-got-rid-of-the-headgear-after-its-teenage-years dept.
Scientists have named a new species of horned dinosaur (ceratopsian) based on fossils collected from Montana in the United States and Alberta, Canada. Mercuriceratops (mer-cure-E-sare-ah-tops) gemini was approximately 6 meters (20 feet) long and weighed more than 2 tons. It lived about 77 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period. Research describing the new species is published online in the journal Naturwissenschaften.
Mercuriceratops (Mercuri + ceratops) means "Mercury horned-face," referring to the wing-like ornamentation on its head that resembles the wings on the helmet of the Roman god, Mercury. The name "gemini" refers to the almost identical twin specimens found in north central Montana and the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Dinosaur Provincial Park, in Alberta, Canada. Mercuriceratops had a parrot-like beak and probably had two long brow horns above its eyes. It was a plant-eating dinosaur.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Tramii on Thursday June 26 2014, @11:24PM
What? No pictures? Bah!
Here you go Soylent:
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/weird-science/say-hello-horned-dinosaur-wings-its-head-n135116 [nbcnews.com]
(Score: 2) by Ken_g6 on Friday June 27 2014, @12:43AM
Pictures are there [cmnh.org], but they weren't linked.
Meh, cars in the '60s had better "wings" than this. [wikimedia.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @12:48AM
The artistic rendering looks alot like a triceratops to me and it wouldn't be the first time someone finds a dinosaur and thinks it's an unknown speices and it turns out to be triceratops.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Friday June 27 2014, @05:12PM
Images in stories has been bugged. It's now been fixed and committed: https://github.com/SoylentNews/slashcode/pull/234 [github.com]
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by _NSAKEY on Friday June 27 2014, @04:57PM
Another poster already addressed the lack of pictures, but why did the editors and/or submitter feel that giving us a pronunciation was more important? Telling us what the name means is all fine and dandy, but I got the impression that whoever included the pronunciation was making the post more friendly to the 18 and under crowd, which is weird because I had the distinct impression that we left that demographic behind upon leaving Slashdot.
I don't think it's unfair to say that A. This dinosaur name was easy enough to figure out how to say without the submitter or editor providing an assist. B. Fewer people care about the pronunciation of a new dinosaur's name than having artist's conceptions of that same dinosaur. Priorities, guys.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Friday June 27 2014, @05:29PM
The English language is not a phonetic language, and thus without a pronunciation guide, it would be very easy to get wrong. As you've indicated, the vast majority of us are likely adults, and no doubt will be bragging to their friends and coworkers about this article. Without a proper pronunciation guide, it would be trivially easy to commit a serious faux pas, and cause the impression that one is simply pretending to be smarter than they actually are. The crack team of flying editors is working hard to make sure that each and every user can go to their friends enriched in culture, knowledge, and equipped with a "I know more than you because I read it on the internet" attitude.
I'm not sure how you can argue with our priorities when we provide ample ammo for allowing others to nitpick, complain, rage, and/or just plain old argue. If we were still at the other site, we'd be making comparisons between VMS and dinosaurs, or off-topic comments about Micro$oft, or something. Here, we're complaining about pronunciation; I don't know about you, but I can feel the culture in this community raising by leaps and bounds.
So please, on the behalf of the staff, STFU, and have a good day :-)
(this message brought to you by the tounge-in-cheek department)
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by _NSAKEY on Friday June 27 2014, @10:09PM
I think in this exact case, providing the pronunciation in parenthesis still seems like a bit too much hand-holding, even for a "normal" crowd. Even most children know how to pronounce "triceratops" correctly, and are at least passingly familiar with Mercury (The planet, anyway). If someone did happen to commit a faux pas with this particular dinosaur, I would go so far as to say that they deserved it.
As for the English language's problems, that's partly because English is a collection of ugly hacks to make Latin, Greek, and German play nicely together, and partly because of the fact that spellings/pronunciations have changed over time simply because they weren't "classical" enough (I'm looking at you, aluminum vs aluminium). but that's an argument for another day.