Ann Smith Age 12, of Indianapolis, Indiana, for her question:
How were the prehistoric animals named?
The complicated job started out with some weird and wonderful mistakes. This was some two centuries ago when even experts were not sure what the fossil remains of prehistoric animals actually were. A modern scientist can figure out the pedigree of a new fossil, place it on its proper family tree, and give it a suitable name.
We have everyday names for the everyday animals that share our world and people of different languages naturally have given them different names. Scientists detest confusion of this sort, especially in the names and special terms they need. Their scientific names and classifications of plants and animals are based on a . system worked out in the 1700's by Karl von Linne. This Swedish naturalist is known to the world of science as Linnaeus. His system has been improved and modified to include all known living things. It also has been extended to include their prehistoric ancestors.
However, the fossil remains of long. gone animals were found before the streamlined system of classification was in common use. Some of the early collectors had rather un¬realistic views of animals past and present. They also tended to believe that dragons, griffins and other legendary animals might once have been real. Their curiosity drove them to assemble scattered bones in skeleton form. One of these mismatched skeletons was exhib¬ited as the fossil remains of a unicorn and taken as proof that this imaginary animal really lived in the distant past.
Other skeletons were found neatly assembled in the ground. But no animals alive resembled them. They were given fanciful names and described as wicked old creatures de¬stroyed long ago by Noah's flood. But gradually the world of science began to take a more sensible, long range view of the growing collection of found fossils. Geologists helped to figure when these animals lived by dating the rocky deposits in which they were buried. The separate items became part of a long story of trial and error, dating back millions and billions of years.
It became plain that the prehistoric animals were the ancestors of living animals. True, the generations had changed but this happens in the best of families. The classi¬fications of Linnaeus were based on certain features shared by the animals in a group. All the six legged bugs belong in the Order Insects. The fossil of a six legged dragonfly with a four foot wing spread obviously belonged on the insect family tree, even though he lived 250 million years ago. Fossils of the Mesozoic Era show that the earth was populated by a vast assortment of animals, all.having the dominant features of the modern lizard or Sauria group. These prehistoric monsters were named dinosaurs, meaning Terrible Lizards.
The scientific names of animals past and present are borrowed from Greek and Latin, classical languages known to scholars of all nations. Sometimes these ancient words carry along ancient misunderstandings. The translation of the old word hippopotamus is river horse. The original ancestor of the horse family was a spaniel sized fellow who lived 50 million years ago in Eocene times, the Dawn Age of modern mammals. The name of this pre¬historic animal is Eohippus, the Dawn Horse.