Protrachodon, or how I spent hours chasing a ghost because I couldn't let it go
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What the heck is a Protrachodon (and should it even be italicized)?
(If you are thinking about being a paleontologist, this blog captures the steps I took to track down information)
Mgiganteus1 didn't include a rationale as to why auto-redirect was the preferred solution. The Orthomerus page doesn't acknowledge "Protrachodon "whatsoever. Wikipedia is a wonderful resource for when a quick info hit is needed, but for academic research it can fall short. Individuals with access can make decisions without justification, change other's entries, and even have the power to revert changes made by someone who has done deep digging. I enjoy Wikipedia immensely but please remember to use it as a starting point for research, not as a "be all end all" source for answers. (Rant over :-).)
Knowing the limits of Wikipedia and preferring the primary literature, I thought I'd quickly "solve for X" by dusting off some old tomes, Ctrl-f a few 1800/1900s PDFs, and move on. Hilarity ensues...
Remembering the 1990s I then thought of my beloved Dinosaur Mailing List (DML), aka the dino listserv! For those of you who weren't around at the dawn of the internet, this was *the place* to be for paleontologists. The newest finds, hottest rumors, and sometimes vicious repartee transpired on a strangely Twitter-like listserv. It still exists by the way. (Props to Jura at reptilis.net for mirroring the archive and with instructions and how to sign up to the new one)
I found on the archive that George Olshevsky wrote the following in 1999 in response to a question from Mickey Mortimer about this taxon:
This is a synonym of Orthomerus. Nopcsa made up this name to give validity to his earlier family-level name Protrachodontidae, which had no type genus. Subsequently Abel (1919) and Huene (1929) reused Nopcsa's name in various contexts, but spelled it Protrachodontinae and Protrachodontinidae, respectively. None of these names has any scientific validity; they are historical curiosities.
I should have probably stopped here. It was 2 AM and I had work in but a few hours, but I was so curious about Olshevsky's sentence: "Nopcsa made up this name to give validity to his earlier family-level name Protrachodontidae, which had no type genus." When did he make up the name? Where does it first appear? Olshevsky didn't say, so off to the Nopcsa literature it was to be...
PDFs of Centuries-old Texts
I checked that old chestnut of Kuhn 1936 where I found Protrachodontinae, consisting of Orthomerus and Syngonosaurus, but no "Protrachodon." Huene 1929 and Abel 1919 both used, as George indicated, the term Protrachodonxxx but neither reference the genus "Protrachodon." Surely Nopcsa truly didn't create a subfamily without basing it off of a genus? That isn't permissible under the rules of zoological nomenclature. As an aside, cladistics allows one to do just this, maybe Nopcsa was ahead of the curve?
Werner (1919) mentioned that the classification of Trachodontidae into Trachodontinae and Saurolophinae is unsatisfactory. That it is more correct to place Orthomerus and Kritosaurus into the Protrachodontinae and Saurolophus, Hypacrosaurus, Corythosaurus, Trachodon, Hadrosaurus, and Claosaurus into the Trachodontinae. He cited Nopcsa 1918 for this reason. Naturally, off to Nopcsa 1918!
The salient part of Nopcsa 1918:
Google's translation: "In any case, recognize yourself, classification
of the Trachodontidae in Trachodontinae and Saurolophinae; it seems rather correct to put Orthomerus and Kritosaurus in a subfamily "Protrachodontidae"
and compare the Trachodontinae with the forms Saurolophus, Hypacrosaurus, Corythosaurus, Trachodon, Hadrosaurus, and Claosaurus.
and are conspicuous by the strongly elongated premaxilla. The
In the first parts of these notes, provisionally adopted the classification of the
Ornithopods should be modified according to these observations."
Was this the earliest appearance of the Protrachodontidae? Where was the actual genus "Protrachodon"? Nopcsa knew the rules; you can't have a family or subfamily without a genus to be the bearer of the name. I needed to go deeper in time to see if I can find an earlier appearance.
Nopcsa 1915 lists what I believe is the first use of Protrachodontidae:
What I do know is I spent well over 8 hours in a rabbit warren (a warren is a connected series of rabbit holes) thanks to the Wikipedia entry on Orthomerus not mentioning "Protrachodon" nor any justification by Mgiganteus1's as to the auto-forwarding to Orthomerus from "Protrachodon." I re-searched, ie. searched again, to come to the conclusion that there never was a true Protrachodon, that it is as Olshevsky said, a historical curiosity.
2 comments
“Trachodontiden” is German for “trachodontids”.
Hi there. Ironically it was I who asked that question about “Protrachodon” way back in 1999, and it’s great to see this more complete treatment of its history.
One point I’d like to make is that the ICZN first edition didn’t even come out until 1961, so “the rules” were a lot more nebulous in Nopcsa’s time. Even the 1947 International Rules of Zoological Nomenclature (DOI: 10.1111/j.1474-919X.1947.tb03908.x) only states how to make a family name from the type genus (Article 4), not our more explicit current Article 11.7.1.1 (a family name must “…be a noun in the nominative plural formed from the stem of an available generic name” and “the generic name must be a name then used as valid in the new family-group taxon”). So a Protrachodontidae without an actual genus Protrachodon would not have been wrong, just as in your 1915 excerpt he uses the family Ornithopodidae that is not based on a genus Ornithopus.
My second thought is that in 1923, Nopcsa was using “a Protrachodon” as in “a member of this descriptive grade”, much as in 1907 he referenced "a “Pro-Avis”" when Pro-avis was not a genus and he could have written pro-avian instead.