FONA herzogae, a newly discovered dinosaur species in Utah’s Cedar Mountains, was named after a Chamorro goddess.
The grandparents of paleontologist Haviv Avrahami, a member of the research team, are from Guam. He gave the dinosaur the generic name Fona, based on the ancient Chamorra creation myth. Its species name, herzogae, is in honor of Lisa Herzog, director of operations at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences Paleontology Museum.
According to a press release from North Carolina State University, where Avrahami is studying for his Ph.D., Fona was a “small-bodied, plant-eating dinosaur.”
It had anatomical features that led scientists to believe that the dinosaur could dig and dig underground. He had “large biceps muscles, strong muscle attachment points on the hips and legs, fused bones along the pelvis…and hind limbs that are proportionately larger than the fore limbs”.
Avrahami joked that the dinosaur was like “a gargantuan gopher, mixed with a vegetarian crocodile and also like an ostrich”. He said he could walk on two hind legs.
Avrahami told Variety that “one of the most extraordinary things” about Fona is that it was one of only two dinosaurs known to burrow.
She also raised her young underground. Avrahami said predation may have prompted the animals to seek shelter there. Fona was a “small” dinosaur — adults could stretch to seven feet from tail to snout, Avrahami said, adding that scientists were able to find many of its bones intact. He said their tendency to burrow into the ground helped with conservation.
It was this association with burrowing and fossilization that led Avrahami to draw a parallel between the dinosaur and the Chamorra creation myth.
The name Fona comes from the Chamorian goddess Fo’na, who created the world from her divine brother’s body parts after he died. When her work was done, Fo’na turned into a rock from which all humans emerged.
In Avrahami’s scientific paper on Fona herzogae, he said that at a site called “Mini Troll” he and his team discovered two “sub-adult dinosaurs” that may have been male and female or “perhaps siblings”. Those samples “fell into the ground where they … petrified,” he said.
It took Avrahami years to understand that Fona was his own species.
“I took all the bones of his skeleton and traveled all over the world and looked at a lot of his relatives and was able to find that these features are unique,” he said.
Avrahami, who has a self-described “hunger for everything” related to Pacific culture, called it an honor to be able to name his first dinosaur after his own cultural heritage.
After consulting with cultural practitioners from Guam, including Dietrix Duhaylonsod, Jeremy Cepeda, Ralph Unpingco and Brandon Cruz, he finalized Fona as his family name.
“We went with the ancestral creation story because it’s a story of beauty, of life, of creation that more accurately reflects the life of Fona the dinosaur,” Avrahami said.
In addition to honoring its roots, naming a species based on indigenous culture is also an attempt to “decolonize” paleontology, he said, adding that Western science has many examples of a “dark history.”
“There have been many Western colonial powers that have descended or parachuted into native lands and extracted minerals, fossils and dinosaurs from Native American lands,” he told Variety. “They bring [specimens] back to their Western museums and it’s depriving them of the cultural heritage and the natural heritage that’s in the native lands.”
Avrahami hopes that by honoring his indigenous culture, he can help create a more diverse pool of scientists in the future.
“Ultimately, I hope it will inspire kids growing up to see that indigenous cultures are increasingly represented in science,” he said. “That there is a place for all kinds of ethnicities and cultures to thrive.” We’re trying to create a community that’s really accepting of many different cultures.”