The Thagomizer

If you’re in your twenties or older, chances are that you’ve seen the Far Side comic shown on the left: the caveman slideshow in which the spikes on the tail of a stegosaurus are identified as the “Thagomizer”, named in memory of an unfortunate caveman named Thag Simmons.

Although I’ve known that The Far Side comics are popular amongs nerds and scientists, I had no idea that the term “Thagomizer” had been adopted by paleontologists as an actual term. But that’s what happened, and now the word has its own Wikipedia entry and is seen mention by the Smithsonian, a book published by Scientific American and New Scientist magazine.