Taxacom: Quick question RE availability of a name in zoology (was animal, now pseudofossil)

[David Campbell]

>
>  Which potentially contradicts the work of animals (proposed after 1930)
> being excluded from the provisions of the Code. What if the work of an
> animal was originally mistaken for an animal itself?
>

Although there has been debate about the exact interpretation, the
consensus seems to be that names invalidated under these provisions are
ones proposed knowing that the taxon fell into one of the categories, not
ones corrected by subsequent discovery.  The work of modern animals  is
contrasted nomenclaturally with fossilized traces, which are still nameable
under the ICZN code.  I don't remember the genus now, but there's a name
originally proposed to be a fossil gastropod, reinterpreted as a plant, and
now recognized as a spiral coprolite.  The genus can be used for coprolites
and could not be re-used for animals.

As another example, there was considerable debate over using the genus
name *Cornu
*in gastropods, because the original specimen was a mutant individual.
However, in the description, Born (1778) shows no awareness that he had a
weird mutant form of a common species, so the genus *Cornu *is available.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
Associate Professor, Geology
Department of Natural Sciences
110 S Main St, #7270
Gardner-Webb University
Boiling Springs NC 28017