Talk:Megafauna
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Removed text "Really big plants". (!) Don't bother deleting the empty page, I'll write something to go here tonight. Tannin 22:37 Dec 29, 2002 (UTC)
I know this whole capitalization of species names thing has raged on the mailing list, but this just looks wrong:
- the Giant Panda, the Red Wolf, the Blue Whale or the Koala.
-- Tarquin 08:16 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
- It is, however, correct, Tarquin. First and formost, we aim to be correct. Tannin 08:19 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Yes, but surely "Koala" is wrong; after all, we write "human". I think both parties are partially correct in this debate, and I'd like to see it cleaned up without this present over-extension in both cases. I've just spent some time going through David Attenborough's Life on Earth. He writes: "the argus pheasant", "elephant fish" but "the King of Saxony Bird", "the Nile crocodile". I think the rules for capitalization are more complex than we think -- Tarquin 08:28 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
- Koala is an exact one-to-one synonym for Phascolarctus cinereus: it's a formal species name and as such should always be capitalised except in light popular work (such as newspaper articles or fiction) or when we are talking about 2 or more different koalas - which is impossible if we are speaking of living species, because there is only one.
- However, it would be perfectly correct to write, say, there are fossils of five koala species in the limstone sediments at Riversleigh.
- "Echidna", on the other hand, is wrong. Either we are talking about any of the three species of echidna, in which case we say "echidna", or we are talking about Tachyglossus aculeatus, in which case its name is "Short-beaked Echidna", or else maybe we mean Zaglossus attenboroughi, in which case we don't call it anything because it doesn't have a common name yet! Perhaps this newly discovered species will eventually come to be called "David Attenborough's Echidna", as that is who it was named after. More likely though, it will be something like "Highland Echidna" or "Highland Long-beaked Echidna". Tannin