History Main / ImprobableTaxonomySkills

* ''Literature/JurassicPark'':

* ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs'': Identifying the species of an insect pupa found on the bodies of victims is a plot point, and the professional entomologist consulted needs time and equipment to answer the question.

* ''Film/JurassicPark'': Grant is able to perfectly describe the exact hunting methods used by raptors, despite only having their bones to work with. And then there's them knowing that Rexy hunts by motion...

* ''Fanfic/PrehistoricParkReturnedFromExtinction'': The end-of-chapter notes tend to include the genus and species name of each creature rescued, something that is usually rather rare, even in the source material and other Prehistoric Park fanfiction. Some chapters include this simply for the sake of keeping things clear to the readers -- the mission to rescue dinosaurs from Jurassic North America explicitly lists [[spoiler:Big Al]] as an ''Allosaurus fragilus''. ''That'' example, though, was also because all ''Allosaurus'' species from that time and location were rescued (for reference, North America has five different species of ''Allosaurus'' -- ''A. fragilus'', ''A. lucasi'', ''A. jimmadseni'', ''A. atrox'', and ''A. amplus''. [[Fanfic/WelcomeToPrehistoricKingdom The sequel]] {{downplay|edTrope}}s this in the first chapter by having Nigel only identify the non-sauropod dinosaurs in the region due to the sheer number of similarly sized sauropods from Cretaceous South America making it almost impossible to know the exact species.

* ''Fanfic/PrehistoricParkReturnedFromExtinction'': The end-of-chapter notes tend to include the genus and species name of each creature rescued, something that is usually rather rare, even in the source material and other Prehistoric Park fanfiction. Some chapters include this simply for the sake of keeping things clear to the readers -- the mission to rescue dinosaurs from Jurassic North America explicitly lists [[spoiler:Big Al]] as an ''Allosaurus fragilus''. ''That'' example, though, was also because all ''Allosaurus'' species from that time and location were rescued (for reference, North America has five different species of ''Allosaurus'' -- ''A. fragilus'', ''A. lucasi'', ''A. jimmadseni'', ''A. atrox'', and ''A. amplus''.

* ''Film/JurassicPark'':
** Grant is able to perfectly describe the exact hunting methods used by raptors, despite only having their bones to work with. And then there's them knowing that Rexy hunts by motion...

* ''Fanfic/{{Paradoxus}}'': In the [[Recap/ParadoxusCapitulo02 second chapter]], Galadwen refers to every human population she's ever met during her interdimensional travels as ''Homo sapiens'' even though she hasn't visited Earth's dimension yet nor she's the kind of character to bother to study human phylogenetics that much. Galadwen has a curious and even scientific disposition most of the time, however, she's also a {{Fantastic Racis|m}}t biased against all non-elves and finds humans too brutish and violent for her interests. All in all, her qualifying all humans as hominids in the ''sapiens'' genre is more of a shortcut to showcase how, from her perspective, human beings are all the same.

* ''Film/HoneyIShrunkTheKids'': The tiny kids are running away from a gigantic lawn mower and jump into a hole in the ground. Nick immediately identifies the exact species of worm that made the tunnel (despite the worm not even being present). Possibly justified in that they are in his backyard and since he is a science geek, it's at least remotely possible that he knows what species of worm lives in their area (Nick identifies it as a common earthworm, which would likely be most people's first guess anyway).

[[AC:Arts]]
* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_of_the_Unicorn Unicorn Tapestries,]] a group of seven tapestries dating from circa 1500, show at least 20 distinct types of flowers with more scientific accuracy than botany textbooks from the same period.

* ''Series/{{House}}'': Coupled with his implausible ''diagnostic'' skills, House is able to recognize things that entire teams of forensic pathologists couldn't, using either minute samples or none at all; the inevitable explanation is either convoluted and implausible, or else "they were looking in the wrong place."

** Grant manages to identify an x-ray of an unknown reptile as the dinosaur species ''Procompsognathus triassicus'' from a brief look. This is made especially unbelievable by the fact the species in question is only known from a few poorly preserved, incomplete fossils, and lived more than two hundred million years ago in Europe, but the specimen was collected in Costa Rica of the present day, and as later found out, a genetic chimera.
*** The novel makes it pretty clear that the recovered specimen on the X-ray is mainly of the hindquarters of the animal, and the holotype specimen of ''Procompsognathus triassicus'' includes both pubis and hindlimbs. Since Grant is a professor of Paleontology, it is hardly unbelievable that he is aware of the research into the dinosaur, especially since paleontologist John Ostrom had commented on ''Procompsoganthus'' in 1982, very close to the time of the events in the novel.

** Ellie, a paleobotanist, knows from a cursory glance that a certain plant is an extinct species. In all fairness, the character ''does'' have a doctorate in paleobotany, and many high-ranking and distinctive taxonomic groups of plants do have few or no living representatives (for instance, the entire phylum of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pteridospermatophyta seed ferns]] has been extinct since the Eocene at the latest, and the order [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgoales Ginkgoales]] is represented by only a single living species, ''Ginkgo biloba'').