Collective Nouns of Dinosaurs

[theronk03]

There are collective nouns for the great majority of modern animals, but from what I can tell, the closest thing to a collective noun for any species of dinosaur is a herd or a pack, which are generic collective nouns and just the two don't seem like enough to account for millions upon millions of years worth of dinosaur species when there are conspiracies of ravens, murders of crows, falls of lambs, and congresses of baboons.

Are there any collective nouns for dinosaurs? And if there aren't, who/which body should be approached for a set of collective nouns to be properly established?

[Iulus Cofield]

Sometimes I think the main authority on these nouns is whoever made an internet list of them, but that's only because they sometimes seem so unlikely, like a crash of rhinos.

[AvatarIII]

There are collective nouns for the great majority of modern animals, but from what I can tell, the closest thing to a collective noun for any species of dinosaur is a herd or a pack, which are generic collective nouns and just the two don't seem like enough to account for millions upon millions of years worth of dinosaur species when there are conspiracies of ravens, murders of crows, falls of lambs, and congresses of baboons.

Are there any collective nouns for dinosaurs? And if there aren't, who/which body should be approached for a set of collective nouns to be properly established?

and a parliament of rooks, the crow family have it made when it comes to collective nouns

i'm not sure what is wrong with Herd for Saurapodomprpha, Herd for Ornithischiaor (or Flock specifically for Ornithopoda), and Pack or perhaps Flock for Theropoda for example.

[theronk03]

The problem with using herd or pack for sauropodomorpha or theropoda is that those are both suborders, which would mean that while all theropods (basically any large two legged carnivourous dinosaur) come in packs, collective nouns for the avian dinosaurs go down to individual genus. The suborder crows and raven's belong to include everything from titmice to birds of paradise. And I doubt anyone would call a group of birds of paradise a murder. So why should we discriminate against the dinosaurs?

[AvatarIII]

But what it's the real purpose out collective nouns anyway? A lot of them are remnants from hundreds of years ago, and are generally based on some aspect of the creature's habits when in a group, something we really don't know that much about of dinosaurs, apart from speculation, sure a lot of it is good and well researched speculation, but it's speculation all the same. If someone was building a language today, why would they come up with different collective nouns for every species anyway? It would be pointless, right?

[ShootTheChicken]

Wikipedia knows all.

[Qaanol]

A thunder of apatosaurs.
A squadron of pterosaurs.
A brigade of allosaurs.
A break in through the window, hide behind the couch, wait until they’re all asleep, then disembowel them and eat their hearts of velociraptors.
A deathtrap of utahraptors.
An orchestra of parasaurolophini.
A clash of pachycephalosaurs.
A beatdown of ankylosaurs.
A phalanx of styracosaurs.
A saw of stegosaurs.
A plantation of diplodocids.
A flood of compsognathids.
A copse of brachiosaurs.
A genocide of spinosaurs.

Source.

[Gigano]

A parliament of pterosaurs.

[Lazar]

But what it's the real purpose out collective nouns anyway?

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

[AvatarIII]

But what it's the real purpose out collective nouns anyway?

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

Yeah sorry, I was typing on my phone, and I missed those bad swype predictions.

I meant to say
"What is the real purpose of [having so many different] collective nouns anyway?"

[thc]

Since birds are dinosaurs, there's your answer. Collective nouns for some dinosaurs do exist.

[AvatarIII]

Since birds are dinosaurs, there's your answer. Collective nouns for some dinosaurs do exist.

birds evolved from dinosaurs, but birds aren't dinosaurs,
dinosaur means terrifying lizard, are birds terrifying lizards? no.

[Jplus]

Since birds are dinosaurs, there's your answer. Collective nouns for some dinosaurs do exist.

birds evolved from dinosaurs, but birds aren't dinosaurs,
dinosaur means terrifying lizard, are birds terrifying lizards? no.

I would say that 'terrifying lizard' doesn't fit the taxon very well anyway. Most dinosaurs were probably not that terrifying and they're much less related to lizards than to modern birds. If you ask me, 'bird' is just another word for 'dinosaur'. That early birds still had teeth, didn't always have feathers and mostly couldn't fly is of secondary importance.

A bit more serious now: of course, I agree that for those early birds the word 'bird' doesnt' fit very well intuitively. Still, if you think it through the word 'bird' is more applicable than 'terrifying lizard'. On the other hand, we also use 'dinosaur' to refer to several other (extinct) branches of reptiles, so under a wider, paraphyletic sense of 'dinosaur' birds are definitely not the same as dinosaurs. But speaking of a 'flock of dinosaurs' still seems reasonable to me.

[AvatarIII]

Since birds are dinosaurs, there's your answer. Collective nouns for some dinosaurs do exist.

birds evolved from dinosaurs, but birds aren't dinosaurs,
dinosaur means terrifying lizard, are birds terrifying lizards? no.

I would say that 'terrifying lizard' doesn't fit the taxon very well anyway. Most dinosaurs were probably not that terrifying and they're much less related to lizards than to modern birds. If you ask me, 'bird' is just another word for 'dinosaur'. That early birds still had teeth, didn't always have feathers and mostly couldn't fly is of secondary importance.

A bit more serious now: of course, I agree that for those early birds the word 'bird' doesnt' fit very well intuitively. Still, if you think it through the word 'bird' is more applicable than 'terrifying lizard'. On the other hand, we also use 'dinosaur' to refer to several other (extinct) branches of reptiles, so under a wider, paraphyletic sense of 'dinosaur' birds are definitely not the same as dinosaurs. But speaking of a 'flock of dinosaurs' still seems reasonable to me.

yeah i mentioned flock in an earlier post, but "flock" (as a collective noun) implies that the group "flocks" (as a verb). the Gallimimus seen in Jurassic Park could easily be called a flock, but did they really behave like that? it's just speculation.

most collective nouns come from a verb describing the animals habits or behaviors, with dinosaurs it is difficult to say how they behaved so collective nouns are harder to choose.

[Anonymously Famous]

If we can't choose a word for a group of dinosaurs based on how they acted, why not just use the word "group"?

[Jplus]

If we can't choose a word for a group of dinosaurs based on how they acted, why not just use the word "group"?

True wisdom here.

[ShootTheChicken]

Or we could base it off our current observations of how Dinosaurs behave. For example:

A lump of dinosaurs.
A pile of dinosaurs.
A fossil of dinosaurs.

[dhokarena56]

I propose a discombobulation of prostitutes.

[Fire Brns]

A stereo of Styrachosauri?

[Anglish]

Or we could base it off our current observations of how Dinosaurs behave. For example:

A lump of dinosaurs.
A pile of dinosaurs.
A fossil of dinosaurs.

Call them "a lump of velociraptors" and you might just become part of "a pile of humans."

[mike_davidson]

What about " A herd of dinosaurs" ?

[Logomachist]

I think the objection to that is that we don't know for sure whether there actually were herds of dinos. Granted, there are probably a few spesies we know congregated in herds (from preserved footprints) but most we can only speculate about.