Terastiodontosaurus Georgalis & Smith, 2024

Georgalis, Georgios L, Smith, Krister T, Marivaux, Laurent, Herrel, Anthony, Essid, El Mabrouk, Khayati Ammar, Hayet, Marzougui, Wissem, Temani, Rim & Tabuce, Rodolphe, 2024, The world’s largest worm lizard: a new giant trogonophid (Squamata: Amphisbaenia) with extreme dental adaptations from the Eocene of Chambi, Tunisia, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (zlae 133) 202 (3), pp. 1-44 : 4-5

Terastiodontosaurus Georgalis & Smith gen. nov.

Zoobank registration: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:DC23B781-B109-4EFB-9C0B-DA42DC09B838

Etymology: The genus name derives from the Greek words ‘τεΡάστιος’ (‘terastios’), meaning ‘huge’/‘enormous’, ‘ὀδούς’ [in genitive: ‘ὀδόντος’ (‘odontos’)], meaning ‘tooth’, and ‘σΑύΡΑ’ (‘saura’), meaning ‘lizard’. The gender of the new genus name is masculine.

Type and only known species: Terastiodontosaurus marcelosanchezi Georgalis & Smith gen. et sp. nov.

Diagnosis: As for the type and only known species.

Note on the proper authorship and spelling of Trogonophidae : Although authorship of Trogonophidae is generally attributed to Gray (1865) (e.g. Estes 1983, Bailon 2000, Kearney 2003), it should be noted that versions of that name had also appeared earlier. These are the Trogonophidina of Bonaparte (1838a), Trogonophina of Bonaparte (1838b, 1839, 1840a, 1840b), Trogonophidae of Gray (1840), and Trogonophes of Fitzinger (1843). Even within the works of Gray, that author earlier misspelled this group as Trigonophes and Trigonophidae ( Gray 1844), with Kuhn (1966, 1967) subsequently assigning authorship to Gray (1844). Vanzolini (1951) supposedly created Trogonophinae as a new subfamily; however, obviously this cannot be the case following the Principle of Coordination of ICZN (1999: Article 36), which dictates that ‘A name established for a taxon at any rank in the family group is deemed to have been simultaneously established for nominal taxa at all other ranks in the family group’. This being said, it thus appears that Trogonophidina of Bonaparte (1838a: 392) is the first introduction of the name, although it was not accompanied by a diagnosis or an explicit mention of a type genus. The same applies to the second usage of the name, again by the same author and again in the same year, Trogonophina of Bonaparte (1838b: 124), which also was not accompanied by a diagnosis or a type genus. The following year, Bonaparte (1839: 10) applied, for the first time, a (rather brief) diagnosis for Trogonophina, simply stating ‘Dentes cum maxillis concreti’, but again still no explicit mention of a type genus was made; this is also exactly the case for his subsequent works ( Bonaparte 1840a: 286, 1840b: 99), where he applied the name with the same exactly diagnosis but again with no explicit mention of a type genus. Later on, the same author added the number of species he included in that group (i.e. one) and its geographical distribution as ‘Africa’ ( Bonaparte 1850, 1852). Duméril and Bibron (1839) used the name Trogonophides, also providing a thorough description of Trogonophis wiegmanni ; however, it is evident in their text that this name was simply an informal plural name for the genus Trogonophis , for which they were also using the informal singular term ‘Le Trogonophide’. Gray (1840: 42) was the first explicitly to mention a genus (‘ Trogonophis , Kaup’) associated with his family group name Trogonophidae , and Fitzinger (1843) was the first explicitly to mention both a genus (‘ Trogonophis . Kaup’) and a species (‘ Trogonoph. Wiegmanni . Kaup’) associated with his family group name Trogonophes. Nevertheless, an explicit mention of a type genus is not a formal requirement for family-group names that were established before 1999, but instead it is enough that there is an indirect inference of the genus from the stem of the family-group name (see ICZN 1999: Article 11.7). Accordingly, authorship of Trogonophidae should be attributed to Bonaparte (1838a).

This being said and now that the proper authorship of the family-group name is clarified, a further comment on the proper spelling of the name is also required. Taking into consideration that the proper authorship of the family-group name is Bonaparte (1838a), it follows that his Trogonophidina would be transformed into Trogonophididae, a spelling that has not appeared the literature. It should be noted that some, mostly recent, authors have used the spelling Trogonophiidae (e.g. Pyron et al. 2013, Čerňanský et al. 2015a, Zheng and Wiens 2016, Burbrink et al. 2020). Nevertheless, the spelling that has made the most frequent appearance in the literature is Trogonophidae (e.g. Gray 1840, Cope 1887, Taylor 1951, El-Assy and Al-Nassar 1976, Gans 1978, Estes 1983, Charig and Gans 1990, Bailon 2000, Kearney 2002, 2003, Augé 2005, 2012, Vidal and Hedges 2005, Maisano et al. 2006, Gans and Montero 2008, Vidal et al. 2008, Wiens et al. 2010, 2012, Longrich et al. 2015, Baeckens et al. 2017, Hawkins et al. 2022, Araújo Salvino et al. 2024, Bell et al. 2024). Following ICZN (1999: Article 29.5), the spelling of a family-group name that is in prevailing usage should be maintained, even if this spelling is not the original spelling and even if its derivation from the name of the type genus is not formed in a grammatically correct manner. Accordingly, the proper spelling of this family-group name is Trogonophidae .