Baby helicoprions would be so cute. Their tooth whorl would just be a little curl and probably too big for the rest of their body.
Much to explore here.
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@futurebird Oh! I thought you meant some kind of actual prion (and were joking about baby ones existing)
@futurebird Wait... is that actually how it's supposed to be pronounced? I assumed it rhymed with scorpion with the emphasis on the "corp."
@futurebird Given that he mispronounces elasmobranchii as "branch ee eye," rather than "brank ee eye" I'm guessing he's wrong about it.
Ok, I looked it up, and... it looks like nobody knows how to pronounce helicorprion. I found numerous conflicting pronunciation guides (one even conflicts with itself, and I'm pretty sure that was LLM-generated). For fuck's sake, scientists, what are you even doing? So, fuck it, "helli CO pree on" is how I'm pronouncing it because "hell ick oh PRY on" is weird.
"it looks like nobody knows how to pronounce helicorprion"
There are literally dozens and dozens of ants whose scientific names I have no idea if I'm saying correctly since, unless I can find the person who named them or some linguistic chain of custody it's kind of impossible to know.
I think the way it works is that those of us who talk about the ants the most win.
This is why ants are called "pogos" and "discos" and more ... most myrmecologists being fundamentally silly people.
@StarkRG @futurebird surely until the helicorprions tell us what they want to be called any pronunciation is as valid as any other, so you carry on
This video is what has me thinking about these strange not-quite-sharks first thing in the morning.
(A paleo artist explains their choices when drawing this mysterious creature.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki_34ngR-Aw
The Problem with Helicoprion
YouTube