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Brontosaurus-Name Means “Thunder Beasts”/Lakotah
https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/Mayor.html
The most well known scientific name for a dinosaur derived from Native American culture is Brontosaurus, a tremendous 60-foot long sauropod described by Othniel Marsh in 1879. In honor of the Lakotah fossil scouts who showed Marsh the colossal skeletons of extinct creatures they called “Thunder Beasts.”
American Horse/Lakotah-"Before Lakotah obtained horses late 1600's the Thunder Beast had saved a band from starvation by driving a herd of Tatanka/Buffalo/Bison in the band's camp where the men used lances & arrows to feed the people
Native Americans led many paleontologists to world-famous deposits of dinosaur and other prehistorical animals in the American West, beginning in the 19th century. The guides explained their tribes’ mythology and knowledge of the strange, gigantic beings that once flourished and then vanished, leaving their stony remains in the ground.
This historical cultural exchange resulted in numerous American Indian myths, names, legends, and lore about dinosaurs and other extinct species commemorated in scientific nomenclature for fossils. LakotaSioux languages are well represented. Examples includeThe large rodents Manitsha tanka, Campestrallomys siouxensis, and Hitonkala; the hippo-like anthracothere Kukusepasutanka,Fossil mammal Ekgmoiteplecela
Iguanodon lakotaensis (a Cretaceous dinosaur)
Paleontologist J. Reid MacDonald bestowed Lakota Sioux designations on several Oligocene mammals of the White River Badlands,SD such as Sunkahetanka, “dog with large teeth.”
The name Ekgmowechashala for the primate fossil discovered near Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Reservation, is Sioux for “monkey” or “little cat man.” A new species of Jurassic apatosaur was discovered in 1994 in Wyoming, the first sauropod dinosaur with a complete set of “belly ribs.” The paleontologists named the dinosaur Yahnahpin/Brontosaurus because they noticed that the ribs bear a striking resemblance to Lakotah warriors’ chest armor, mah-koo yah-nah-pin (“chest necklace”).
Northern Montana, R. Lund named a new petalodontiform chondrichthyian fossil Siksika (“black foot”) for the Blackfeet nation.
Quetzalcoatlus, the giant pterosaur, was named after the Aztec Feathered Serpent god.
The pterosaurs Tupuxuaraand Tapejara are names of spirits in Tupi mythology of Brazil. The theropod dinosaur Ilokelesia of Patagonia comes from Mapuche words ilo (flesh) and kelesio (lizard), and the tyranosauroid Megaraptor namunhuaiquii is Mapuche for “foot lance.”
Douglas Wolfe dubbed the new horned dinosaur Zuniceratops to honor the Zuni on whose land the fossils were discovered. A Cretaceous marsupial of the Southwest is named Kokopelia after the familiar flute-playing figure Kokopeli in Navajo rock art. Two hadrosaur dinosaurs of the San Juan Basin, New Mexico, Naashoibitosaurus andAnasazisaurus, are part of the taxonomic nomenclature associated with Kritosaurus navajovius, named by Barnum Brown in 1910.
The enormous marine reptile Tylosaurus nepaeolicus/Liodon nepaeolicus (first described by Edward Drinker Cope in 1874), was found in the gray shale of the Solomon River in Kansas. The species name comes from “Nepaholla,” the Pawnee name for the Solomon River.Tylosaurinae are a subfamily of mosasaurs, a diverse group of Late Cretaceous marine
NOTE. Thanks to all my paleontologist friends who supplied examples of Indian languages preserved in fossil species’ scientific names. For the history of Native American discoveries and interpretations of dinosaur and other fossils, see my book “Fossil Legends of the First Americans” (2005).
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