Talk:Thagomizer

Joke?

Wait, is this really a real term now, Or somebody's idea of a joke?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.19.72.173 (talk • contribs) .

As far as it concerns the Far Side, no it's not, it actually was a term Larson used in a cartoon.

I'm assuming that since the article cites a credible source, that it's widespread use is no joke either. It might be nice if the article quoted a page number in the book listed as a reference. TheRingess 07:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

• I expanded the reference to include the chapter. The exact page is 162- I'd love to know the original paper where the name was used though...Sabine's Sunbird 20:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the poster is asking if it was used BEFORE Larson made the cartoon. The answer to THAT is no, Larson INVENTED the term for the cartoon. And one reference does not common usage make. CFLeon 21:25, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

It crops up pretty often on the DML [1], though that's not a published source.Dinoguy2 00:16, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

It's apparently the recognised term now for the bone, used widely within the field. Origins are less important ultimately than how a term ended up being used and renowned for. I may have a dig through journals later to get more references. LinaMishima 17:52, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

The term Thagomizer is cited by New Scientist Journal on 8 July 2006; a reputable source.--MWShort 02:38, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Just because joking use of it can be sourced doesn't mean it should have an article. If this article is to be kept, it should be at the correct paleontological term, and "Thagomizer" a (silly, but valuable) redirect to it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 00:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

It would appear that the specialist plates and spikes that a stegosaurus has along its back and tail are Osteoderms. However, the term is not limited to the stegosaurus spikes and is a general term for all boney plates in the skin and is used in relation to a wide range of species. "Tail spike" would seem to be a more specifc term but there is no Wikipedia article under that name and the reference to tail spikes in the Stegosaurus article points to Thagomizer. Whilst it may be "silly" it does seem to be in use as a recognised descriptive term for the tail spike of the Stegosaurus so I think the article should stay where it is. It helps give an insight to the the nature of parts of the palaeontological community that they use the word. There are many other names for animals or for body parts which might once have been though of as silly but over time have become accepted usage, for example: Dodo, Wombat or Belly Button. --DavidCane 01:12, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

A reply by me from my user talk page in response to two people from here convincing me that there really (amazingly) isn't any scientific term for this other than "thagomizer" and that real scientists use the term (regularly and seriously, not just as an in-joke):

OK, I'm more bewildered than skeptical at this point. It's as if there were no scientific word for "head", only for "eyes" and "cheeks" and... <fzzt spark pop> ..does not compute...DOES NOT COMPUTE <BANG!> But I'll take your majority words for it.

I.e., I am not proposing deletion any longer, and I hope you can understand the initial skepticism. This is an amazingly weird case, and to anyone but a current paleontologist it looks like patent nonsense (specifically blatant Larson fanwanking, by one of the definitions of that term), especially with a cartoon up top, and links to other "silly" stuff in the "See also" section, and so on. The article really ought to do a lot more to dissuade this perception, or this misunderstanding will just happen again. I.e., maybe not even mention the origin of the term until the last section before references, and keep the cartoon down there too. Just an idea. Peace.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 07:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Why? Nothing except stegosaurs (and arguably a glyptodont or two, but "tail club" suffices for them) has a thagomizer. We get by by saying "tail spikes", "tail", "(distal) end of the tail" and the like. In the rare cases when we want a word that precisely fits the spiky end of a stegosaur, we need to say "thagomizer", because there is no other word.

Hey, English doesn't have a word for the opposite of "loud"… lexical gaps happen and tend to get filled by loanwords. :-) David Marjanović 12:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Why the link to HSK?

Why is there a link to the Horrendous Space Kablooie?

It's another term that was first used in a comic strip (in this case, Calvin & Hobbes) and was subsequently adopted into the scientific lexicon. It appears that the use of the HSK is somewhat less widespread, however. AEW 16:22, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Why the link to Baboon Phlanges?

I think that sums it up...

read the BP page; it's another term that started on a comedy program and was adopted by scientists working in the field. Uucp 15:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Not finding a reference to baboon flanges or baboon phlanges on the baboon page or in the revision history...Lost in editing? Morfusmax (talk) 20:05, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay, let's get serious about the Larson cartoon

First, I'm not seeing how it displays a slide projector. I'm just seeing a drawing (blueberries on bearskin?) on a stand, no indication of any projector. Second, Larson didn't insult our intelligence by explaining the cartoon, must we? Let's get rid of those two sentences! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Middlenamefrank (talk • contribs)

Done. I think it falls under WP:OR, anyway. Feezo (Talk) 07:57, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

The typical lecture format at the time Larson inked the panel was to use a slide projector, and the skin in question certainly looks like a portable slide screen.

Personally, I liked the comments about Thag getting "thagomized," and explaining the humor. Not everybody has functioning eyes and can see the cartoon; they rely heavily on descriptions. ChristinaDunigan 02:26, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I liked them too; that's why I included those comments on the main page. However, it is right that the cartoon needs no further explanation then what it already says. Anyone looking at it knew ol'Thag Simmons got his keyster "thagomized" pretty bad! What still gets me about it was how the scientific community eagerly adopted this term; proof even they have a sense of humor! Carajou 03:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

They need that sense of humor, in order to cope with Creationists, George Bush, and the like. Wahkeenah 03:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I resemble the remark that "even they" have a sense of humor. Middlenamefrank (talk) 20:00, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

• Many articles have explanations which seem obvious to those who already know the explanation. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to teach. I find that it is the comments in the first paragraph that are insulting. Artists typically don't explain their works. Larson wasn't writing an encyclopedia, and even he has admitted that some of his cartoons were so obscure that no one got them until he explained them. The anachronisms are obvious and are part of the Larson technique. No, there's no slide projector visible, but there's what looks like a projector screen and what looks like a light shining on it, so Larson is at least drawing a parallel with a modern projector. Explaining the cartoon is not "original research", it's an attempt at being educational rather than being obscure for someone who might look at this cartoon and not "get it". But I'm not going to add it back, since that first user will probably just delete it again. Wahkeenah 03:27, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Well EYE wouldn't delete it, I didn't delete it the first time, just asked the question here on this page. But I quote from the article: '...in which a group of cavemen in a lecture hall are taught by their caveman professor that the spikes were named in honor of "the late Thag Simmons".' How much more explanation could anybody capable of browsing Wikipedia need?? Let's give the reader SOME credit! Personally I loved the cartoon when I first saw it, but to find out years later that the paleontological community has embraced it to the point of adopting the term....well it has me in giggles whenever I think of it. Who says scientists are stuffy? This is one of my favorite entries. Middlenamefrank 05:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Date of Cartoon?

Is there a date for when the cartoon came out? New Scientist says 1982, should this be in the article? - SimonLyall 08:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

"1982" appears in the top left corner of the cartoon frame; presumably this is the year it was drawn, although it could, possibly, be a serial number.--DavidCane 11:32, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm assuming it's the year; here's another 1982. JDoorjam JDiscourse 05:39, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It's the year, as noted in the picture's page when you click on it. The one book of Larson's that I have (The Pre-History of the Far Side) has the year posted in the upper left of each cartoon. Presumably the cartoon would have had a specific date, but the book I have doesn't show that. Wahkeenah 10:53, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

This still hasn't been determined? I happen to have the herniator, The Complete Far Side, which establishes the date as 27/5/1982. --Kizor 20:11, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion

I don't know how proposed deltions work exactly, but consider this an objection. The article describes a genuine part of the anatomy of stegasaurs and is referenced. Its also been illustrated in Wikiworld (thanks for deleting the link, btw), and any attempt to deleted it should go to AFD for proper consultation. Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:40, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

NB: One does not need to object to a {{prod}} (proposed deletion); just remove the prod. It signals "no, this is not an abandoned nonsense article, thank you very much"; any further opposition (which I'm not raising) would have to go to AfD (or SD if speedy deletion criteria applied, which they wouldn't here). Just an FYI, in case you run into more prod's here and there. Anyone can remove a prod and doing so in and of itself is an assertion that the article should not be auto-deleted, so it won't. This is precisely why I used prod; if this were an article anyone cared about it would be un-proded immediately, which it was. I.e., I was being more cautious than one might think at first glance. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 07:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'd never come across a proposed deltion before, so I wasn't sure how it worked. No matter.Sabine's Sunbird talk 08:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the poster did not follow proper procedures. Alternatively, he could write the article he thinks should be there and then redirect this one to it... rather than trying to get somebody else to do that work for him. Wahkeenah 01:44, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying not to resent that insinuation. I did in fact follow proper WP:PROD procedure - I ascertained that the article's current status (or existence) was not vandalism, and then added the tag (with description of the issue as I saw it), included an edit summary that warned I was prod'ing, and did not mark it a minor edit. I then "considered" whether to go digging around in edit history to find someone to notify, and decided against it, which is a perfectly valid decision under proposed deletion policy. NB: I'm not actually proposing deletion any longer, as discussed elsewhere, just addressing the accusation that I didn't follow WP policy in this action.

WikiWorld link

PS: The template ("thanks for the deleting the link, "btw") in question is up for TfD, and will probably be deleted, because it is an inappropriate WikiProject talk page heading template that indicates as a class (and in this case directly claimed) that the articles whose talk pages it was included on fall under the editing and review purview of the WikiProject in question, which is emphatically not the case. It should be replaced with something more like the "this article was used as a news source" and "this article was referred to in a major media story" type of "news about this article" templates; I misremember their exact names, but several of them are at the top of Talk:Godwin's law for example. The fact that such a template might be desirable/useful does not argue for continuing to misuse templates intended to serve entirely different purposes. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 07:27, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

PPS: If it is important to aficionados of this article that a high-profile link be made to the "WikiWorld" cartoon stuff, tell me so on my talk page and I can probably whip up an appropriate template of the sort described above and install it here and on other WikiWorld-relevant article talk pages. I think there are only about 20 of them. I gnome-patrol around for template abuse, but I don't want to inadvertently remove any functionality (however "misbegotten" >;-) in the process. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 07:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I cherish my ignorance of template related matters on Wikipedia (and categories for that matter), but it doesn't seem unreasonable for articles or article talk pages illustrated in Wikiworld to have a link or mention somehow; I just wasn't impressed by the removal with any kind of replacement (many people probably don't read the signpost and I certainly didn't know the article I started had been illustated till I saw it on the page). I don't mind whats used to draw attention as long as something does. Sabine's Sunbird talk 08:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Done! See top of talk page now. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:10, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The issue of last names (and other related silliness)

This page is on my watchlist and it seems that every other day someone adds the line about "cavemen not having last name" and then someone removes it. Or visa versa. I don't really care one way or the other but could we possibly vote one way or the other? Its quickly becoming a candidate for a slow-burn lame edit war, which is sad. Sabine's Sunbird talk 08:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, we don't know if cavemen used surnames, and it's pretty clear that the intention of the joke is that Thag was indeed killed by the stegosaur. J. Spencer 15:12, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you do know. They certainly didn't use names like "Simmons". It's part of the joke. Wahkeenah 15:41, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

<sheepish>Well, yeah, Simmons. Certainly not modern surnames.</sheepish> I'm not going to fight about it, because I agree there's no need for it in this article, but cavemen could have known each other by multiple names; I'd guess either relational, like "Ogg, son of Grog", or occupational/skill, like "Gar Spearmaker". Anyway... J. Spencer 15:47, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

"Simmons" is a rather minor part of the joke. The upshot seems to be "we named the pointy end after the caveman who found out what it was used for. Fatally." Crud, the more I think about it, the less the cartoon hangs together in any sort of coherent, humor-producing way. I'm just going to back out now... J. Spencer 16:01, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

You have hit upon the reason the article was once posted for possible deletion: It's too specific and narrow. This is a classic bit of Larson mixed-context: not just the unscientific mixing of cavemen and dinosaurs, also the various modern stuff, a la The Flintstones: the meeting room, what appears to be an overhead projection, talking in English, the surname Simmons, along with the stereotype "Thag" (which is just as unlikely as "Simmons"). The "lameness" is the article itself. More information about the cartoon, rather than POV-pushing about what the article is "about", might render it less "lame". Wahkeenah 16:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

If you've got a reference which backs the claim that cavemen didn't have last names, it can certainly go back into the article. Without a reference, it is either unverified or original research, and does not belong in the article. Looking at the history, it's been added back in by one user repeatedly. Firsfron of Ronchester 16:25, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Sure, there are lots of references on what the names of cavemen were, as they kept meticulous records. Fine. You and your humorless colleagues win. Don't go griping the next time the article comes up for deletion. Wahkeenah 16:33, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Let's ask that one from GEICO. J. Spencer 17:06, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Speaking for a moment as a palaeontologist, I think the point of this entry should be that scientists (a) enjoy cartoons and (b) sometimes use things dredged up from cartoons and apply them to science. Museums (especially US and British ones) have a predilication for trying to make science "accessible" by using terms that someone in Exhibits or Marketing thought were a good idea. (Someone at the NHM decided "Mesozoic Fossils" was too complicated and came up with "Middle Age Fossils", for example.) "Thagomizer" probably falls into that camp, and will likely never be used outside of exhibitions or books aimed at lay readers. In other words, agonising over whether or not cave men had surnames is a bit silly. Concentrate on the origins of the name and where it has been used. Don't waste time over explaining the joke (like all jokes, the more its analysed, the less funny it becomes...). Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 19:18, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair use of cartoon

In reinstating the cartoon, my explanation was too long for the edit summary, so I give it here:

In that email, Larson is sending a cease and desist letter to a website that displayed a Far Side cartoon every week for solely entertainment purposes. The Far Side cartoon in this article is different: it is a single cartoon, the purpose is educational, not entertainment, it is low-resolution, and it is crucial for a full understanding of the subject of this article. It does not infringe upon Larson's ability to earn revenue from his cartoons. Simply put, it meets the legal definition of fair use and our non-free content criteria. I am nearly 100% certain Larson was not thinking of applications such as this when he wrote that letter. -kotra (talk) 22:29, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Spinophorosaurus

The recently described sauropod Spinophorosaurus is also thought to have had tail spikes. I'm not sure whether this technically should be called a thagomizer or not. -- 201.53.124.69 (talk) 15:10, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Dinosaurs and humans

An anon editor is again trying to reword the sentence "dinosaurs and humans did not exist in the same era". Given that it's the same wording, [2], [3], and now [4], and the pointed edit summary in that last edit, it's probably the same individual. I previously discussed it with that individual at User talk:Quiddity/Archive 10#Thagomizer. This is just a note, for future reference. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:19, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. That's what I thought, too. Firsfron of Ronchester 19:44, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Was / is there a REAL name for this anatomical feature?

Could there really not have been a name for this anatomical feature before Larson referred to it in his comic?! Because in my quick skimming of this wiki article I didn't see anything that said what the official name for this body part is or was before it was called a thagomizer. All it says is "The thagomizer, or tail spikes, is..." so does that mean that "tail spikes" is or was the official name of this body part? If so, that needs to be worded much more clearly. For instance it should say something like "The thagomizer, or tail spikes (as scientists had previously called it), is..." Okay, that's poor sentence structure, but you get what I'm trying to say. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.190.101.145 (talk) 05:36, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

To settle this debate, I propose the term acanthurum, Latinized from Greek acanthos "thorn, spike" and uro "tail". Thagomizer doesn't sound bad, but acanthurum sounds a little more, I dunno... scientific. I'm not a paleontologist, but perhaps one is reading this and will use the term. It's my own invention, but I freely donate it to humanity. - Myrddin_Wyllt 3/14/11 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.64.188.9 (talk) 01:21, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

2 years later...

Per the original comment above, and this recent edit (which got reverted), I'll try to clarify the lead section.

"an informal" strongly implies that there are other informal names for the tailspikes-as-group (there aren't), and that there is a formal name (there isn't). They were just "the spikes on the tail", or "tail spikes", etc, before thagomizer was coined (afaik). -- Quiddity (talk) 04:19, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

A quick survey of google indicates that the closest thing to a "formal" name is indeed "tale spikes". It may not be Latin, but it's certainly descriptive. "Thagomizer" is just a joke that scientists latched onto. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:25, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Its not a joke though. It is now used in the formal literature and papers on Dinosuria, by the paleontologists working on them. This makes it the formal name for the feature.--Kevmin § 05:40, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

It started as a joke, and if what you say is true, then scientists have adopted it simply because it's more interesting than "tail spikes". Scientists (along with many of us) were admirers of The Far Side for its frequent forays into the biological arena, where Larson would take a true fact and make something funny out of it. Such as the family of spiders driving down the street, with its "Have a Nice Day" smiley containing 8 eyes. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:11, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

True, and despite its origins as a FS Cartoon, its now the accepted technical term for that segment of Dinosauria anatomy.--Kevmin § 22:11, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Scientific terms from jokes

Perhaps scientific-terms-with-humorous-origins could turn into its own page.

It seems that nuclear physicists define "1 barn" to be 1x10e-24 cm-squared. It is the approximate area of the cross-section of a uranium nucleus, which was "as big as a barn" compared to some other nuclei they had worked with. It all goes back to the joke (wisecrack, really) that so-and-so has such bad aim (with a baseball, with a bow, with a gun, etc.) that he cannot hit the broad side of a barn. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marvin W. Hile (talk • contribs) 14:39, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

A category would probably be the way to go for this idea. meshach (talk) 18:12, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Merge with Stegosauria

I know this will probably be an unpopular proposal, but this anatomical feature is only found in Stegosauria, so the short text here should simply be part of that article. Same with short articles about other anatomical features only found in specific groups of dinosaurs, such as Epoccipital and Rostral bone (should be merged into Ceratopsidae), and Predentary (should be merged into Ornithischia). FunkMonk (talk) 02:31, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

I think Stegosauria is a significant enough topic that it isn't a problem to have separate supporting articles, like this one. There's no particular advantage to having a single monolithic article. (In fact, a potential pitfall is that if sub articles are merged into the main article, later well-meaning editors may decide the main article is too comprehensive and trim it. Losing content.) ApLundell (talk) 19:47, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree with ApLundell. Especially as the Thagomizer has a pop-culture element separate from the main biology of a Steogauria.108.48.52.104 (talk) 20:27, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

I removed the {{Merge}} template since the discussion here has been stale for ~9 months and it was an incomplete merge proposal (as {{Merge from}} was never added at Stegosauria). —RP88 ^(talk) 07:04, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

 ;Well resolved! The remove proposal was presumably made in good faith, and while WP:NOT has, i'm pretty sure, a WP:NOTAJOKEBOOK section, WP:POKERFACE should and may already say that while humor should be sparse and avoid distracting from content that is primarily factual, the scholarly acceptance of thagomizer in place of the presumably lumbering descriptions of the anatomical structure is a significant fact about the nature of scientific inquiry, even if not one commonly singled out for attention. Oh, is everyone aware of the analogy between the benzene ring and the ferrous wheel? My high-school chem was rudimentary, but I picked it up in first-year combined physics-chemistry, and passed it on to other computer-science teaching assistants, in grad school. JerzyA (talk) 23:19, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Humans and Stegosaurids Co-Existing In Comic

The humans came after the stegosaurids and that is clearly a picture of a stegosaurid, not an actual stegosaurid. So, it is completely possible the comic is not inaccurate or anachronistic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xnamkcor (talk • contribs) 17:40, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Weapon

What use are vertical spikes on a tail that can mostly be swished side to side? Or did the dinosaur do a hand stand to bring the tail up over its body? Greglocock (talk) 23:08, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

That's an interesting question, but one which I think is beyond the scope of this talk page. Also I'm not sure the answer is actually known. DS (talk) 00:17, 25 September 2021 (UTC)