Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Therapsid
/θəˈræpsɪd/noun
A member of the synapsid group that contains mammals and their nearest extinct relatives.
The Greek roots
θήρ
thḗr
wild beast
ἁψίς
hapsís
arch, loop
Literally: “beast arch”
The story of the word
Robert Broom named the group in 1905 out of the Karoo fossils of South Africa, where the rock records the transition in unusual detail. The jaw is where the change shows: bones that hinged the reptilian jaw walk backwards into the ear and end up as the mammalian hammer and anvil. θήρ also reaches English as "treacle", by a long road through θηριακή, a compound antidote against the bite of a wild animal.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1905
Same family
synapsiddiapsidtheropodtreacle
In a sentence
Gorgonopsians were therapsids, and the sabre teeth arrived long before any cat.