Gerard Smets (1857 – 1922) was a Belgian paleontologist, scientist and abbé known for the misidentification of the plant genus Aachenosaurus, named after the locale of Aachen in Belgium.
Smets was born in 1857 and died in 1922 in Moresnet, Belgium.
History of the Aachenosaurus[]
Aachenosaurus was found by Smets in 1887 and was also named by Smets on October 31, 1888, who named the type species Aachenosaurus multidens. Based on these fragments he determined that the specimen was a hadrosaur reaching an estimated 4 to 5 meters in length which might have had dermal spines.[1] He defended this conclusion, citing that the fossils had been examined visually with the naked eye, magnifying lenses and with the microscope. However, his error was soon demonstrated by Louis Dollo. Smets at first tried to defend his original identification but was again proven wrong by a neutral commission and withdrew from science completely from pure embarrassment, but not until he had published a paper on turtles in 1889.[2]
References[]
- ↑ Smets, G. (1888). "Notices palaeontologiques". Ann. Soc. Science Brussels (Bulletin de la société Belge de Géologie de Paléontologie & D'Hydrologie) 12 (2): 193–214.
- ↑ John Wright (2014). The Naming of the Shrew: A Curious History of Latin Names. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 47–49. ISBN 978-1-4088-2035-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=qWDGBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA47.