Lefalophodon: What Does It Mean?


What does "Lefalophodon" mean?

In 1872 Edward Drinker Cope, following his standard practice during the Cope-Marsh war, sent a telegraph to Philadelphia giving a brief description of a new fossil uintathere, Loxolophodon cornutus (uintatheres were large herbivorous mammals, not belonging to any living order, that existed between about 57 and 44 million years ago in North America and Asia). But the transmission was garbled and the name was published almost immediately as "Lefalophodon discornatus." Within days Cope's hand-written manuscript arrived and was published with the correct name, thereby creating yet another nightmarish priority problem. The species is now known as Eobasileus cornutus.
