Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Dimetrodon
/daɪˈmɛtrədɒn/noun
A sail-backed Permian predator, closer to mammals than to reptiles.
The Greek roots
δι-
di-
two, twice
μέτρον
métron
measure
ὀδούς
odoús
tooth
Literally: “two-measure tooth”
The story of the word
Edward Drinker Cope named it in 1878 for teeth that come in two sizes, long stabbing ones at the front and smaller ones behind, an arrangement that hints at what its lineage was about to become. Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur. It is a synapsid, on the branch leading to mammals, and it had been extinct for tens of millions of years before the first dinosaur appeared.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1878
Same family
metronomediametermastodonodontology
In a sentence
The sail on the Dimetrodon model is stretched over long rods of bone.