Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Ornithischian
/ˌɔːrnɪˈθɪskiən/noun
Any dinosaur of the group whose pubis points backwards alongside the ischium, including the horned, plated and duck-billed plant-eaters.
The Greek roots
ὄρνις, ὄρνιθος
órnis, órnithos
bird
ἰσχίον
ischíon
hip joint, hip socket
Literally: “bird hip”
The story of the word
Harry Govier Seeley split the dinosaurs in two in 1888 on the arrangement of the hip bones, coining Ornithischia against Saurischia, the lizard-hipped group. Nature then made the names ironic: birds evolved from the lizard-hipped side, and no ornithischian left a single descendant. The backward-pointing pubis arose twice, independently, which is the sort of coincidence that keeps palaeontologists arguing about the whole scheme.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
ornithologysciaticsaurischian
In a sentence
Stegosaurus and Triceratops are both ornithischians, despite looking nothing alike.