Scare Quotes and Recent Ceratopsians

Scare quotes are a figurative use of quotation marks to imply the object(s) being enclosed (be it a theory, phrase, or word) are not proscribed by the quoting author(s) [n1]. In this case, they are used around taxonomic names that the authors (Longrich, 2010 [1] & Scannella and Horner, 2010 [2]) regard as unusable. There’s a further trend, in that some authors place these quotes to imply the taxa used are nomina dubia, or otherwise unavailable taxonomically, i.e., nomina nuda or some other type of informality. In which case, the usage is confusing.

On Ceratops

Three things to note here:

1. Ceratops montanus is not complete, and is based on incomplete cranial remains that are considered unusable for further taxonomic purposes. It is, in short, a nomen dubium.

2. The word ceratops is a Latinized compound of a set of two Greek words. This is more complicated than it sounds. It impacts everything from how the word is pronounced to how it is combined with other words, to how it is expressed in translation, etc.

3. Not all “ceratops” taxa are dinosaurs. There is a marked trend in taxonomy for some groups to use a prefix, infix, or suffix of a certain form for many taxa, and in dinosaurs this is no different: you get -titan for some sauropods, -pelta for some ankylosaurs, -raptor for small, predatory theropods, and of course, -ceratops for ceratopsians.