DP:NC DP:NAME |
Naming conventions on Dinopedia are pretty straight forward and depend a lot on simply common sense. Note that this page will be continuously updated as new types of articles find their way onto the wiki.
People
If a person's full name is known, such as Paul Callistus Sereno, then the article is to be created with more common uses of the name, such as Paul Sereno, with the full name being redirected to the common name for brevity.
Scientific Name Titles
If an article page is focused on an organism, such as a genus or species, the title should reflect whichever taxonomic ranking is extinct first. If the genus is still alive, but a species of the genus is extinct, then the page's title and content should be the species. If all species are extinct, then the genus would receive the title while the individual species can act as redirects to the genus page.
- i.e., the genus Panthera is extant and wouldn't get a page, but the species Panthera spelaea is extinct. As such, Panthera would not get a page, but P. spelaea would.
Species
When a species is mentioned (on its own page or another), the scientific binomial name should at least be mentioned once. After this, the genus name or common name can be used.
- common names: lowercase e.g. tyrannosaur or tyrannosaurus (but tyrannosaur is much better)
- scientific names:
- Genus: Uppercase, italicized
- species: lowercase, italicized
So:
- scientific:
- binomial names: Deinonychus antirrhopus; Microraptor gui
- genus names: Deinonychus; Microraptor
- common:
- genus names: Deinonychus, Microraptor
Do not use common names too much, they look amateuristic. If you use them, realize that you are referring to the genus, or to an order ending on -ia. For example ankylosaur can be used for Ankylosaurus or for Ankylosauria. Even more informally it can refer to the family, as equivalent to ankylosaurid. Inconsequential use confuses the reader.
Plurals:
Best use common names, as they may be pluralized in English : e.g. 45 tyrannosaurs, but never 45 tyrannosauruses.
Don't pluralize scientific (Latin) names in an English way: Velociraptors is wrong. Velociraptors is correct, but now you are meaning several species belonging to the genus Velociraptor, some of which you don't recognize. It may sound strange, but "Sarah is attacked by lots of Velociraptor and 3 Utahraptor" is the correct way. The same applies to pluralizing binomial names: "John was stampeded by a large herd of Yunnanosaurus huangi and 5 Yunnanosaurus robustus". There is no change. Don't use binomials in this case unless you want to confer that the identification of the species is very important.
Note: the correct plural of Velociraptor would be Velociraptores, that of Tarbosaurus would be Tarbosauri. Luckily, nobody uses these.
Higher order taxa
The formal names of all groupings higher than genus are capitalized, never italicized. If fitting the situation, common names are preferable. These are in lowercase.
Example:
"Lambeosaurus is a genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur" sounds a lot better than "Lambeosaurus is a dinosaur genus belonging to the Hadrosauridae". The same applies to other higher-order taxa.