Jim Morrison lizard, You know that it would be untrue, you know that it would be a lie, if we were to say to you that paleontologists don't occasionally give funny names to their fossil finds.
Behold, Barbaturex morrisoni, a 40 million-year-old extinct lizard whose name, "honors Jim Morrison, vocalist and lizard king," as reports the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal. Among the biggest lizards to ever dwell on land, the plant-eating creature measured almost 6 feet long and weighed about 60 pounds, thriving during a warm era in Earth's climate that saw swampy conditions extend into the Arctic Circle.
"I was listening to The Doors quite a bit during the research," said study lead author Jason Head of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in a statement. "Some of their musical imagery includes reptiles and ancient places, and Jim Morrison was of course The Lizard King, so it all kind of came together."
A poem that Morrison wrote, The Celebration of the Lizard, first made the lizard king reference in 1968 on The Doors' Waiting for the Sun album sleeve.
Barbaturex resembles a larger version of today's bearded lizards and chameleons, Head says. No word of whether any future findings will honor the Dead Milkmen, creators of the seminal 1985 album, Big Lizard in My Backyard.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Jim Morrison lizard
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