Tortuga Gazette 28(11): 10, November 1992

What's In a Name?

by Michael J. Connor

Scientific names are often Latinized forms of the name of a person connected with the discovery of the taxon, or describe some characteristic quality such as color, size or habitat. In this issue, What's in a Name? focuses on the pancake tortoise.

The pancake tortoise is a very unusual chelonian, so much so that in his encyclopedia Pritchard describes it as "the most extraordinary tortoise in the world". It is known by a variety of common names: pancake tortoise, because it's flat; soft-shelled tortoise, because its plastron is flexible; crevice tortoise, because of its penchant for cracks in rocks; and Tornier's tortoise, because its binomial is Malacochersus tornieri.

The pancake tortoise was first described in the scientific literature in 1903 by the Austrian herpetologist Friedrich Siebenrock, in honor of whom the genus Siebenrockiella was named. Siebenrock named the turtle Testudo tornieri in honor of the German taxonomist Gustav Tornier. In 1929, the Russian Wilhelm Lindhomb recognized the pancake tortoise's distinctness from other tortoises and proposed the genus Malacochersus, giving the pancake tortoise the generally accepted scientific name of Malacochersus tornieri (Siebenrock, 1903). Incidentally, it was Wilhelm Lindhomb who named Siebenrockiella after Siebenrock.