Get ready for part of a fictional essay I could have written in 3rd grade. And if Ghostbusters II had been around in 1985. Dinosaurs use to look like big lizards. Zuul, called a dog is “some kind of big lizard.”
Long before Ghostbusters and afterwards scientists/paleontologists have discovered more details about different species of dinosaurs. While some looked like something the Ghostbusters could have battled I never would have thought a race of dinosaurs would look “close enough” to a Terror Dog to be named after the minion of Gozer.
An armored dinosaur species, technically an ankylosaur once roamed present day northern Montana eating plants like there wouldn’t be a tomorrow.
Just being called aykylosaur isn’t good for a career in the scientific entertainment business. 75 million years later the Royal Ontario Museum presents Zuul crurivastator.
Why name a dinosaur after Ghostbusters? (Besides why not?)
Victoria Arbour, paleontologist and postdoctoral fellow:
The name was inspired by the Ghostbusters villain Zuul, says Victoria Arbour, paleontologist and postdoctoral fellow at the ROM and University of Toronto.
“Me and my co-author David Evans were batting around ideas for what to name it, and I just half-jokingly said, ‘It looks like Zuul from Ghostbusters,'” she said. “Once we put that out there we couldn’t not name it that.”
“I wanted to name something an ankle breaker because of these tail clubs,” Arbour said. “But I wanted a specimen with a nicely preserved tail, and they don’t get better than this particular specimen.”
Former Jurassic Park
Finding a full dinosaur skeleton is a rare feat, Victoria Arbour said, and is especially uncommon for this group of dinosaur.
“They were slightly more rare animals in their ecosystems compared to other dinosaurs we know from the same areas, such as the duck-billed dinosaur.”
Sources:
Ecto-Containment 