LONG ANSWER
The distinctive, spiked tail of the dinosaur Stegosaurus did not have a proper name until 1982, when it became known as a thagomizer. However, the term wasn’t coined by a leading palaeontologist, but by American cartoonist Gary Larson. In one of Larson’s strips published that year, a caveman teacher in a prehistoric classroom is shown pointing to a picture of a Stegosaurus tail, telling his students it is called a “thagomizer” in honour of “the late Thag Simmons”. While humans didn’t even live at the same time as the dinosaurs, experts liked the name and began using it. And they never stopped.