Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Ornithopod
/ˈɔrnɪθəˌpɑd/noun
A plant-eating dinosaur of the group that includes Iguanodon and the duck-billed hadrosaurs.
The Greek roots
ὄρνις
órnis
bird
πούς
poús
foot
Literally: “bird foot”
The story of the word
Marsh named Ornithopoda in 1881 for the three-toed birdlike feet, and the name has been quietly misleading ever since: birds are not descended from ornithopods but from theropods, the meat-eating line. The same confusion runs deeper in dinosaur classification, where Ornithischia means bird-hipped and birds belong to the other group, the lizard-hipped Saurischia. ὄρνις gives ornithology and, through its genitive ὄρνιθος, the whole ornith- family.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1880s
Same family
ornithologytheropodsauropodtripod
In a sentence
The bonebed held several hundred ornithopods of the same species and the same age.