GSC Guide to Authors - Formal and informal scientific names

Generic, trivial (species), and subtrivial (subspecies) names should be italicized in the author's typescript and italicized in the published report. This applies also to tabulated lists, figures, and tables and to the adjectival use of names to denote biostratigraphic or chronostratigraphic units (e.g. Calvustrigis rutherfordi Zone).

When the names of such taxa are used as part of formal lithostratigraphic or paleogeographic terms, they are not italicized in common practice (e.g. Bakevellia Sea, Carbonicola Bed); however, the International Stratigraphic Guide (Hedberg, 1976) recommends that the printing of fossil names for stratigraphic units should follow the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) and the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN) (i.e. italics should be used in GSC publications).

Names of suprageneric taxa are not italicized but are written with a capital initial letter. If the names are used informally as English nouns or adjectives, they should not be capitalized:

Chonetidae, Ammonoidea, Mollusca, Arthropoda, Ostracoda, Foraminifera, chonetids, ammonites, molluscs, arthropod burrows, ostracodes, foraminifers.

The genus Spirifer is in the family Spiriferidae, which includes the true spirifers.

Informal reference to the following suprageneric categories can be indicated by the appropriate termination:

Formal scientific names of fossils should conform to the rules and recommendations of the relevant code — the ICZN or the ICBN — which are based on the binomial Linnean system, first used by the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné (Carolus Linnaeus) in 1758. In this system, each species name is a binomial, a combination of two latinized names: 1) the generic, or genus name; and 2) the trivial, or species name, which always follows the generic name. Authors of new names should familiarize themselves with the appropriate code.

If a trivial or subtrivial name is an adjective and not used as a substantive, it must agree in gender with the genus name. It may therefore be necessary to change the endings of adjectival trivial or subtrivial names when a species is reassigned to another genus. For example, if Peneckiella salternensis were transferred to the genus Phacellophyllum, it would become Phacellophyllum salternense.