German scientists found offensive and racist names for dinosaurs and demanded that these names be changed. This was stated in a journal article by paleobiologist Emma Dunn and colleagues. Nature.
Over the past 200 years, paleontologists have discovered hundreds of different dinosaur species, and their names depended solely on the imagination of zoologists. Animals were often named according to their physical characteristics, the names of scientists, or the places where they were found.
Dunn and his colleagues at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany decided to analyze the names of all dinosaur fossils from the Mesozoic era. They examined nearly 1,500 species and declared 89 species associated with racism or “named after controversial figures” as potentially offensive. For example, the researcher named an insect named after Adolf Hitler.
The scientist believes that dinosaurs do not deserve such a fate and proposes to rename them. But the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, which oversees the principles of naming species, disagrees with those who initiated this initiative and believes there is no reason for change.
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