Pterodactyls, Aerodactyls, and Roundabout Reborrowing
In the year 2018, the world of paleontology got a new genus of flying reptiles known as Aerodactylus. If that name sounds like a Pokémon, that's exactly why we're here.
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| Aerodactyl the Pokémon Artwork by Ken Sugimori |
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| Aerodactylus the Pterosaur Credit: Steven U. Vidovic, David M. Martill |
Up until 2018, there were a number of different fossils that were all believed to belong to a single genus of flying reptile - Pterodactylus (we’ll come back to that name later). Then Christopher Bennett, a researcher challenged the status of one of these fossils, the end result of which was the distinction of a new genus. Bennet named the new genus Aerodactylus based on the Greek roots aero and dactyl(os) meaning ‘wing finger.’
While it would be easy to think of Aerodactylus as just another prehistoric reptile which a name derived from Greek roots, the story is significantly more...roundaboud.
Anyone who played Pokémon growing up (or as an adult) will probably recognize that the name Aerodactylus is almost the same as the flying rock monster named Aerodactyl which is in fact where the name also comes from.
Pokemon or Fossil?
Credit: Bulbapedia
In the paper describing the genus, Bennet writes
“The name derives from the Nintendo Pokémon Aerodactyl, a fantasy creature made up of a combination of different pterosaurian features. It seemed a pertinent name for a genus which has been synonymous with Pterodatylus for so long due to a combination of features.”
So let’s look at that other genus for moment - Pterodactylus. These were pterosaurs whose remains have been found in Europe and Africa and lived during the Late Jurassic. So they were flying around the same time as Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus and Allosaurus but way before the likes of Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, or Velociraptor.
And it absolutely behooves me to mention at this point that both the genus Pterodactylus in specific and Pterosaurs as a group are not dinosaurs, although they are distantly related.
Amongst paleontologists, fossil-enthusiasts, and very nerdy children (past-me) this particular group of flying reptiles are known as pterosaurs and fall under the taxonomic order Pterosauria. Like most names for prehistoric reptiles, the term comes from Greek. The first part pteron means wing and is the same root that gives us helicopter and the second part sauros means lizard which you’ll heard at the end of most dinosaur names - Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, Apatosaurs as well as the names of other prehistoric reptiles -Mosasaurus, Edaphosaurus, Plesiosaurus, and even some mammals - Basilosaurus.
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| Edaphosaurus, not a dinosaur Credit: Dmitry Bogdanov |
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| Elasmosaurus, also not a dinosaur Credit - Arthur Weasley |
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| Basilosaurus, not even a reptile |
That being said, the word 'pterosaur' is a term mostly used among scientists and people who are just really into life during the Mesozoic Era (adult-me). For the everyday person using common parlance, any and all flying reptiles can be called ‘pterodactyls.’ You may have noticed that pterodactyl is a shortening of Pterodactylus from before. And these days ‘pterodactyl’ gets used as a sort of catch-all word for any flying reptile, especially the prehistoric ones.
This isn't that weird though. Animals very often have scientific names that are used in one context and another name that is used everywhere else. Think about pachyderms and elephants or Lepidopterans and butterflies.
The every-day use of pterodactyl comes from the early days of paleontology in the 1800s. The first flying reptile was discovered and in his writings, a Frenchman named Georges Cuvier suggested the name Ptéro-Dactyle based on Greek roots meaning “wing-finger.” This became the name of the specific genus pterodactylus. But the word also jumped into the common vernacular as paleontology gained popularity, so 'pterodactyl' became the general public’s catch-all term for pterosaurs while the term 'pterosaur' to describe the larger category actually came later on.
It’s kind of like the old meme where a grandmother calls every video-game a ‘Nintendo’ because it’s the first one she encountered.
And that brings us right back to the Pokémon Aerodactyl.
The Pokémon’s original Japanese name is Ptera (プテラ) which is clearly a reference to the pterodactyl or maybe the Pteranodon. The English name Aerodactyl is clearly a partial imitation of the word pterodactyl, but whether intentional or not ended up using the Greek roots aeros.
Pteranodon model
Credit: Dallas Krentzel
And when you take all this together you can see that the path to the name Aerodactylus looks more like a circle than most etymologies.
To recap there's a genus of Pterosaur called Pterodactylus, whose name is very often used as a reference to the whole group, i.e. 'pterodactyls.' One specimen of Pterodactylus is considered its own distinct genus. This specimen is named Aerodactylus based on Nintendo’s video-game character Aerodactyl whose name was created using Greek roots to come up with something that resembled the word ‘pterodactyl.’
So yes, you can use flying reptiles to illustrate how language borrowing rarely works along straight and direct paths.
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