10 Unforgettable ‘Far Side’ Comics About Dinosaurs
In May 1982, cartoonist Gary Larson published a Far Side comic featuring cavemen in a classroom, with an instructor pointing at a Stegosaurus tail’s spike cluster and explaining it was named “the thagomizer, after the late Thag Simmons.” At the time, paleontologists had no official name for this distinctive tail structure. Scientists began jokingly adopting Larson’s fictional term, and the usage became so widespread in academic circles that “thagomizer” eventually entered scientific nomenclature as the accepted name for the Stegosaurus’s tail spikes. The comic demonstrates how pop culture can influence scientific language and terminology.