So recently a paper was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology that synonymized two species of ceratopsian into one species (Scannella and Horner, 2010). These two species were the world famous Triceratops (photo on left, from Houston Museum of Natural Science, a cast of a Triceratops skull, by author) and a lesser known species known as Torosaurus. Both of these lived at around the same time and in the same area. Scannella and Horner use a large amount of techniques to help determine this but I am not going to go into because the techniques they used I am not an expert on (see here for a better summary).
This synonymization has a lot of people upset that they are losing another icon of their childhood, like Pluto. We all grew up and Triceratops is one of the most famous of all dinosaurs, often depicted in epic battle with everyone else's favorite Tyrannosaurus rex. But as Brian Switek over at Dinosaur Tracking, and David Orr at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs point out (here and here) the name Triceratops is safe. Why is this? The answer is quite simple, it was named first, Triceratops in 1889 and Torosaurus in 1891. Why does that matter? The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), the rules that determine if a name is valid and how to name a new organism, says this for when two species are synonymized:
23.3. Application to Synonymy. The Principle of Priority requires that a taxon formed by bringing together into a single taxon at one rank two or more previously established nominal taxa within the family group, genus group or species group takes as its valid name the name determined in accordance with the Principle of Priority [Art. 23.1] and its Purpose [Art. 23.2], with change of suffix if required in the case of a family-group name [Art. 34].With the Principle of Priority saying:
23.1. Statement of the Principle of Priority. The valid name of a taxon is the oldest available name applied to it, unless that name has been invalidated or another name is given precedence by any provision of the Code or by any ruling of the Commission. For this reason priority applies to the validity of synonyms [Art. 23.3], to the relative precedence of homonyms [Arts. 53-60], the correctness or otherwise of spellings [Arts. 24, 32], and to the validity of nomenclatural acts (such as acts taken under the Principle of the First Reviser [Art. 24.2] and the fixation of name-bearing types [Arts. 68, 69, 74.1.3, 75.4]).This is a long way to say that if something is named first it gets to keep the name if we make two creatures into one (very technically written I know). So what this means is that Torosaurus is now Triceratops, as the name of the paper says, so everyone's favorite ceratopsian is safe from getting the Pluto treatment, sorry Pluto we miss you buddy.
Source
Scannella, J.B. and J.R. Horner. 2010. Torosaurus Marsh, 1891, is Triceratops Marsh, 1889 (Ceratopsidae: Chasmosaurinae): synonymy through ontogeny Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 30 (4), 1157-1168
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