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. 2008 Sep 16;4(6):729–732. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0402

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Naming new dinosaurs. (a) The total numbers of new dinosaurian species named, by decades, from 1824 to 2004; totals per decade range from 5 to 297. These are all new species named, whether they have subsequently been invalidated (inadequate type materials, synonymy, not a dinosaur). (b) Quality of type materials for new dinosaur species, plotted by decades; the measure of quality is the ratio of incomplete materials (isolated teeth or bones; collections of individual elements) to complete materials (complete skull(s) or skeleton(s)). The best-fitting line (y=0.0811x−0.098) shows highly significant correlation (Spearman's rho=0.788; t=5.12; p<0.0001). In these plots, ‘dinosaur’ is used in the cladistic sense, and includes Mesozoic birds, totalling some 100 of the 1401 total species.