History Main / TaxonomicTermConfusion

Frankly, it's not surprising that writers are sometimes ignorant or confused. Though this can also turn into a case of FanWank as many of these words also have different less precise meanings in regular English as in family and class are both used to refer to groups of similar things, a class of ships, the t-series family of trucks so a lot of these errors are just people using the words with their regular meanings. But there's really no excuse for such errors when they're committed by scientists who work in zoology and other fields that explicitly require them to be well-versed in how the nomenclature works.

* In a particularly head-hurting example, [=MUTO=] Prime in the ''Franchise/{{Monsterverse}} comic ''Godzilla: Aftershock'' is described as simultaneously evolving ''from'' the [=MUTO=]s, yet at the same time is the same species which ''created'' the [=MUTO=]s in the first place. Not only is this a complete violation of how evolution and speciation works, but would be impossible to render in modern cladistics, as it implies that the evolution of the [=MUTO=]s and Prime is nothing more than a tightly-closed loop. Somewhere, a taxonomist is probably crying.

* In a particularly head-hurting example, [=MUTO=] Prime in the ''Franchise/{{Monsterverse}} comic ''Godzilla: Aftershock'', is described as simultaneously evolving ''from'' the [=MUTO=]s, yet at the same time is the same species which ''created'' the MUTOs in the first place. Not only is this a complete violation of how evolution and speciation works, but would be impossible to render in modern cladistics, as it implies that the evolution of the [=MUTO=]s and Prime is nothing more than a tightly-closed loop. Somewhere, a taxonomist is probably crying.

* ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'': Titans are all classified under the genus ''Titanus''. Titans represent everything from Godzilla (a reptile) to King Kong (a mammal) to Mothra (an insect). While this is already bad enough, what tips this into making taxonomists everywhere cry themselves to sleep are the following, particularly egregious missteps:

Of course, things are also more complicated than even this. Cladistics, dendrograms, phylogenetics... We'll just leave it at this lest YourHeadAsplode. For entirely imaginary taxanomics PlayedForLaughs, see BinomiumRidiculus.

* ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters'': Titans are all classified under the genus ''Titanus''. Titans represent everything from Godzilla (a reptile) to King Kong (a mammal) to Mothra (an insect). While this is already bad enough, what tips this into making taxonomists everywhere cry themselves to sleep are the following, particularly egregious missteps: