For the Tyrannosaurus rex, as for Elvis and Jesus, being extremely dead has proved no obstacle to ongoing fame. Last seen some sixty-six million years ago, before an asteroid wiped out three-quarters of the lifeforms on earth, it is nonetheless flourishing these days, thanks in large part to Michael Crichton, Steven Spielberg, and elementary-school children all over the world. In my experience, such children not only can rattle off the dinosaur's vital statistics-fifteen feet tall, forty feet long, twelve thousand poundsbut will piously correct any misinformation advanced by their paleontologically passé elders. And here is the most surprising thing that all those ten-year-olds plus pretty much everyone else on the planet know about T. rex: the creature's proper scientific name.
That name is itself properly called a binomen, the smallest unit in the vast system known as binomial nomenclature. You'll remember the gist from basic biology: to eliminate any possible overlap or confusion, every species on the planet, whether extant or extinct, is assigned a full name, consisting of its genus (used here as a surname of sorts, indicating to what other creatures it is related) followed by its species, with both halves Latinized, and the genus sometimes reduced to just an initial, like Josef K. Thus: Tyrannosaurus rex, or T. rex, of the genus Tyrannosaurus and the species rex, known in full translation as King of the Tyrant Lizards.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 21, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 21, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
