Scientific disciplines generally have standardized naming rules and conventions for when you discover a new type of stuff. But if you want to get in there and name something in the natural world, it helps to be the person who discovered it or be so beloved that the world decides to name it after you.
Or maybe just publish a cartoon.
Today’s Moment of Science… the Thagomizer.
Dinosaurs in the stegosauridae family have a highly recognizable arrangement of four boney spikes on the end of their tail. At one point it was suggested to have been ‘for display purposes only.’ However, more recent studies have supported that its sharp pointy parts were used for- scientific term- fucking up a bitch.
The collection of spikes didn’t have a name, but it also didn’t seem like much of a pressing matter. No big deal, nothing to see here.
Gary Larson had been publishing The Far Side cartoon since late 1979. In 1982, he published a comic that displayed an audience of cavemen observing the tail of a stegosaurus. Their caveman lecturer tells them “now this end is called the Thagomizer… after the late Thag Simmons.”
It’s not like there was a campaign for thagomizer to become the official word for these four spikes. And it didn’t happen overnight. But the term was picked up in 1993 by Dr. Kenneth Carpenter, a paleontologist with an apparent sense of humor who studies- would you fucking believe it- thagomizers.
Now considered both something of an informal name and the real title for spiky stegodeath ass (my band name), the term thagomizer now appears in documentaries, scientific publications and museum exhibits. Gary Larson’s fifteen year run of work from The Far Side was so beloved that two species have been named after him.
This has been your Moment of Science, pouring one out for Thag.
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