Les is More

The avialan theropod previously referred to here as "Les" has now made its official, honest-to-goodness debut in the latest issue of Nature, and I can now reveal the proper name for Les - Epidexipteryx hui (the genus name means "display feather" and refers to the fact that the feathers preserved for Epidexipteryx appear to have been used for display rather than flight). It's a pretty fossil, but Nature has pulled its usual frustrating trick of giving us just enough information to whet the appetite, and leaving us howling frustratedly for more information...

Reconstruction of Epidexipteryx hui above taken from The Loom.

Let's Have Less of Les

Tom Holtz of the University of Maryland has confirmed via the Dinosaur Mailing List that the fossil animal introduced in the last post as Les is a snafu. The authors of Les intended for their manuscript to be submitted online to Nature, and its arrival on Nature Precedings was a mistake. There is every possibility that the name given to Les in the manuscript will change before publication (pity, I rather liked the name they'd given), and the reviewers may actually recommend that the authors do just that. It is not uncommon practice for reviewers to recommend that authors not use names that are leaked to the public in some way before publication - I suppose to distance the finished product from the rumour mill, though personally I think it probably confuses things even more.

Still, the very fact that such slips can happen so easily just reinforces everything I said in the last post about the need to discuss how the internet affects our concepts of publication, and whether or not we need to adjust our concepts of how to determine priority accordingly.