(RT) – German paleobiologists have called for an overhaul of the system used in naming dinosaurs, arguing the current nomenclature contains nearly 100 “potentially offensive” names, Nature magazine reported on Tuesday, citing the team’s still-unpublished paper.
A group of researchers analyzed the names of every dinosaur fossil from the Mesozoic Era, defined as between 251.9 million and 66 million years ago, combing through 1,500 species for names they perceived as “emanating racism, sexism, named after (neo)colonial contexts or after controversial figures).”
They found 89 “problematic” species, according to Nature, amounting to less than 3% of the names analyzed. A dinosaur species might be deemed problematic simply because its name was based on the colonial name for the area where the fossil was discovered, the researchers explained, lamenting that “indigenous-language names of places or researchers are often not used or are mistranslated.”
