Othnielia

Othniel's one (honoring Othniel Charles Marsh)

• Othniel · English (personal name, ultimately Hebre · referring to Othniel Charles Marsh, American paleontologist
• -ia · Latin · feminine Latin suffix used in honorific genus names

Othnielia is named in honor of Othniel Charles Marsh (1831–1899), the pioneering American paleontologist who first described many North American dinosaurs during the famous "Bone Wars" of the late 19th century. The name was coined by Peter Galton in 1977 as a tribute to Marsh's foundational contributions to vertebrate paleontology. The latinized suffix -ia is the standard feminine ending used when a genus is named after a person. Marsh himself had originally referred the material to the genus Nanosaurus, and Galton felt it deserved its own genus honoring its original describer.

Named by

Galton

Year named

1977

Period

Late Jurassic

Stages

Kimmeridgian – Tithonian

Found in

Morrison Formation, Utah and Wyoming, USA

Othnielia is a small ornithopod dinosaur originally assigned to Nanosaurus by Marsh. Galton erected the genus in 1977. It is now generally considered a junior synonym of Othnielosaurus consors (McDonald et al., 2010), though some workers treat the taxonomy as unsettled. The replacement genus name Othnielosaurus also honors O. C. Marsh. Othnielia rex is considered a nomen dubium by some researchers due to fragmentary material.