Word.ws English Dictionary

Elvis taxon

Elvis taxon noun: a taxon that has been misidentified as having re-emerged in the fossil record after a period of presumed extinction, but is not actually a descendant of the original taxon, instead having developed a similar morphology through convergent evolution.

Noun

Elvis taxon (plural Elvis taxa)

  1. A taxon that has been misidentified as having re-emerged in the fossil record after a period of presumed extinction, but is not actually a descendant of the original taxon, instead having developed a similar morphology through convergent evolution.

Forms of Elvis taxon

pluralElvis taxa

Origin of Elvis taxon

Coined in a 1993 paper by D. H. Erwin and M. L. Droser, with reference to the prevalence of impersonators of the singer Elvis Presley.

Questions about Elvis taxon

What does Elvis taxon mean?
Elvis taxon means a taxon that has been misidentified as having re-emerged in the fossil record after a period of presumed extinction, but is not actually a descendant of the original taxon, instead having developed a similar morphology through convergent evolution.
What part of speech is Elvis taxon?
Elvis taxon is a noun.
What is the plural of Elvis taxon?
The plural of Elvis taxon is Elvis taxa.

Words near Elvis taxon in the dictionary

  1. Elvis operator
  2. Elvis operators
  3. Elvis sandwich
  4. Elvis sandwiches
  5. Elvis taxa
  6. Elvis taxon
  7. Elvisdom
  8. Elvises
  9. Elvisesque
  10. elvish
  11. elvishly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Elvis taxon (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Elvis taxon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/elvis_taxon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.