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A Little Wales in Argentina

While doing a little research for a new entry in Dino-Data, I was reading up on the Argentinian province of Chubut.

Turns out, back in the 1800s, a number of Welsh people immigrated to the coast of Chubut, causing a number of the towns and cities in the area to have Welsh names. Today, the official languages of the province are Spanish and Welsh. 

Chubut isn’t the only Welsh concentration in Argentina either. About 5,000 Welsh-speakers live in Chubut, with a total of around 50,000 in all of Argentina. This grouping of Welsh-Argentinian people is called Y_Wladfa.

The dialect of Welsh spoken in Argentina is called Patagonian Welsh, which gained some Spanish influence.

Pretty nifty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Wladfa

[did-you-diknow]

Traditionally, when naming a dinosaur, if you want to give it a name like “terrible dinosaur” or “thick-headed dinosaur” you would use the Latin Saur or Saurus, which mean “lizard”. Your dinosaur would then be called “terrible lizard” or “thick-headed lizard”.

For dinosaurs discovered in China, Saur is replaced with Long, Chinese for “dragon”. In general, the species name of a Chinese dinosaur is usually from Pinyin (Chinese written in accented letters instead of traditional Chinese characters) instead of Latin.

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I learned about a Chilean town with a short history: Chuquicumata. It’s located in the North-central region of Antofagasta.

Chuquicamata is currently the world’s largest open pit copper mine. For about 3,000 years, the area has been used as a source of copper for the native people of the region.

In the early 1800s, mining companies started setting up operations in the area, and between 1915 and 1917 a worker camp was set up near the largest of the sites by the company that then owned the mine, Anaconda Copper.

Over the years, the camp began to grow, and eventually became a fully-fledged town. At its height, Chuquicamata had a population of around 20,000 people.

Unfortunately, the mining operations have caused a huge environmental impact, prompting CODELCO, the National Copper Corporation of Chile, to take severe measures to protect the townspeople. CODELCO, and the Government of Chile, evacuated the town, and by 2007, the town was empty; all of the locals having moved to the nearby city of Calama.

Chuquicamata, or “Chuqui“ as it was known by the locals, is no longer a town, and is now only the name of the copper mine. Apparently you can take bus tours to the mine that run by the former town, though permanent settlements aren’t allowed wthin 10km of the mine.

Documentary, Chile’s Travel Website

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I learned new words, yay!

Holotype: The name given to a fossil specimen that is used to define the named species. Usually it’s the first fossil found of a species, and there is only one holotype.

Paratype: The name given to fossil specimens of a species that support the holotype. Useful if the holotype is only partial or missing something vital. There can be multiple paratypes.

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The dinosaur Abelisaurus comahuensis, the first discovered abelisaur and earliest example of the family, is only known from one specimen discovered in 1983. The specimen in question is only known from a partial skull.

Source

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The Czech Repubic, previously Czechoslovakia, is now officically called Czechia.

That’s the new short-form name of the country, like saying China instead of The People’s Republic of China. The long-form name of Czechia is still The Czech Republic.

The name was originally proposed in 1992, and the Czech government made it offcial in 2016. The various international organizations have been updating since then to compensate, like the ISO, the CIA World Factbook, and Google Maps.

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Having driven from Calgary to Banff (Alberta, Canada) before, I am aware of a town called Cochrane. While looking at a map of Chile, I found that there’s a Cochrane there too.

I looked into it, and I think they’re both pronounced the same way (/ˈkɒkrən/), but they’re named after two different people.

Cochrane, Alberta, is named after Matthew Henry Cochrane, a Canadian senator and rancher from Quebec.

Cochrane, Chile, was named after Thomas Cochrane (10th Earl of Dundonald), a British lord who was named an admiral of the Chilean Navy and helped Chile defeat Spain for Chilean independance.

I tried finding a route between the two, but according to my mapping sources (Bing maps. Google maps, Yahoo maps, and MapQuest), there is no driveable path between these two Cochranes.

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It turns out it’s really hard to find the information I’m looking for about paleontologists that aren’t famous in the English-speaking world.

I was looking for information for ten Chilean and Argentinean paleontologists, and have found the information I was looking for for almost one of them. For two of the most famous modern Argentinian paleontologists (Novas & Salgado), I can’t confirm their birthdays, or for Salgado, even his country of birth.

For the “less famous” paleontologists, I even had to resort to Facebook stalking. I didn’t get the information I was looking for, but I could cobble together bits and pieces here and there.

I suppose they just don’t what that information publicly known, even though it’d help a bunch...

Though it does make me dread trying to find information on paleontologists from other parts of the world.