Chlamyphorus

noun

Chla·​myph·​o·​rus

kləˈmifərəs

: a genus of South American armadillos comprising the pichiciago and related forms

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from New Latin, from chlamy- (taken as stem of Greek chlamyd-, chlamýs "cloak, chlamys") + -phorus -phorus

Note: Genus name introduced by the American physician and naturalist Richard Harlan (1796-1843) in "Description of a new Genus of Mammiferous Quadrupeds, of the Order Edentata," Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History of New-York, vol. 1, Part the Second (1825), pp. 235-45. Harlan states the following about the source of the specimen: "On the 18th December, 1824, Mr. William Colesberry of Philadelphia, presented to the Philadelphia Museum of Natural History the interesting animal which forms the subject of the following pages. Mr. C. gave the following statement to Mr. Franklin Peale:— 'The animal is a native of Mendoza, and in the Indian language is named "Pichiciago." Mendoza is situate in the interior of Chili, on the east of the Cordilleras, in lat. 33° 25′ and long. 69° 47′, in the province of Cuyo … '." Harlan's unetymological chlamy- was corrected to chlamydo- by the German zoologist Johann Georg Wagler in Natürliches System der Amphibien, mit vorangehender Classification der Säugethiere und Vögel (Munich, 1830), p. 35, but this form does not seem to have gained much currency.

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