Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Theropod
/ˈθɛrəpɑd/noun
A member of the mostly meat-eating dinosaur group that walks on two legs and includes birds.
The Greek roots
θήρ
thḗr
wild beast
πούς
poús
foot
Literally: “beast foot”
The story of the word
Marsh named Theropoda in 1881, choosing beast-footed because he thought the clawed feet resembled a mammal predator's. The irony arrived a century later: theropod feet are the most birdlike thing about them, birds are living theropods, and the sparrow on the windowsill has a better claim to the group than any beast. θήρ also gives therapsid and the pharmacological sense in theriac, an antidote against the bite of wild animals.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1880s
Same family
sauropodornithopodtherapsidtreacle
In a sentence
Every theropod fossil with skin impressions now seems to show feathers of some kind.
The trackway records a theropod running, not walking.