Every taxonomist has to check before they name a genus that the name hasn't been used before, or that their own taxon isn't a synonym of some previously named group. Eliminating synonyms is a complex task, involving a slew of literature from the 1758 edition of Linnaeus' Systema Naturae to the modern era. So a number of reference works were published which list where a taxon name was first published. One such was the ten volume Nomenclator Zoologicus which covered the zoological nomenclature from 1758 to 1994. It is now available in electronic format online, in a database format that can be accessed by taxonomic systems. I found out that Pan for the chimps was named by Oken in 1814, because it was considered that they shouldn't remain in Homo, with us humans, as Linnaeus had grouped them...
[Hat tip to the Dinosaur Listserv.]
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It's full of freakish eukaryotes - no prokaryotic genera in there at all as far as I can tell. Useless! :-)
Guess I'll have to stick with NCBI Taxonomy...
So Linnaeus got it right and someone else fucked it up. Okay, maybe Linnaeus only got it partially right. All primates should be in the same genus.
Hey, somebody has to study the freakish eukaryotes.
Linnaeus got it right, but Oken was one of those convinced, like the Lutheran Bishop who attacked Linnaeus for impiety, who thought humans were just special.
Most extinct dinosaurs are missing, too.