Sometimes it makes me sad that the scientific name for Pseudoscaphirhynchids is what it is
False spade snout
It basically means that pseudoscaphirhynchids are a fake (or at least secondary) iteration of scaphirhynchids
And it lowkey makes sense when you think of who was naming these fish, where the fish are, and when they were named
Scaphirhynchids (Heckel, 1835) are North American and pseudoscaphirhynchids (Nikolskii, 1900) are Middle Eastern/ Central Asian fyi
Like I get why they named it that I really do but I wish they had their own distinct name :(
They once had the name Kessleria but there’s a genus of moths also called Kessleria so I guess it’s not really a viable option
I think something like Armiscorpus (armor body) would be cool to acknowledge their particularly prominent scutes
Or maybe like Aralichthys (Aral fish) to honor the Aral Sea system they call home or once called home, since they’ve been mostly extirpated and are on the verge of extinction
P. kaufmanni
