Plateosaurus: the Etymology and Meaning of a Name

From: Ben Creisler
bcreisler <at> gmail.com

My apologies to the DML for the length of this posting--I don't have a
blog of my own. Confusion over the etymology and the meaning of the
name Plateosaurus has been fairly common. In particular, the English
language and the German language Wikipedia articles currently give an
incorrect meaning for Plateosaurus that has spread around the web. I
hope this discussion helps clear up the issue.

Etymology and Meaning of the Name Plateosaurus

Back in the 1990s, I compiled a list of dinosaur names with
etymologies that I had researched from the original sources wherever
possible. The late vertebrate paleontologist Donald Baird was a great
help in this project, and offered critical comments and photocopies of
rare works. I wrote a number of articles on the topic for the Dinosaur
Report newsletter for the Dinosaur Society. One article in 1995 was
about the German paleontologist Hermann von Meyer, entitled “Pondering
the Pachypoda.” In the article, I gave the etymology “broad lizard”
for Plateosaurus, with the spelling explained by the genitive-case
form plateos of Greek platys “broad.” I later posted this etymology on
Jeff Poling’s website Dinosauria.com. That website is sadly gone, but
my old lists of names are still posted on some mirror sites:
http://web.me.com/dinoruss/dml/names/dinop.htm

Currently, the English language Wikipedia article for Plateosaurus
states the following:

Plateosaurus (meaning "broad way lizard", often mistranslated as "flat