Think Mick Jagger Is a Fossil? So Do Some Scientists

By ALLAN KOZINN  SEPTEMBER 10, 2014


If the name had not been bestowed by a couple of fans, Mick Jagger might have cause to take umbrage: a newly discovered extinct swamp creature has been named Jaggermeryx naida — Jagger’s water nymph — in the singer’s honor. Two of the scientists who published a study on the animal and its discovery in this month’s issue of the Journal of Paleontology , Ellen Miller, of Wake Forest University and Gregg Gunnell, of Duke University, said that the animal’s mouth structure is what brought Mr. Jagger to mind. Mr. Gunnell, in a statement, described the structure as probably “a highly innervated muzzle with mobile and tactile lips.”

Not that alternatives weren’t proposed: Angelina Jolie, for example, had some advocates among the researchers, but Ms. Miller insisted that the discovery be named for Mr. Jagger, and Mr. Gunnell, who described himself has “a huge Rolling Stones fan in my day” (citing “Exile on Main Street” and “Let It Bleed” as his favorite Stones albums), concurred.

The fossils were discovered in a desert area of Egypt, but the researchers say that in the Jaggermeryx’s day, some 19 million years ago, the region was a lush, swampy, tropical delta. The scientists described the animal, based on the fossils, as being about the size of a small deer and shaped like a hybrid of a slender hippo and a long-legged pig.

It is not unusual for a newly discovered animal, exinct or extant, to be named for a rock star or other pop celebrity. Just two months ago a water mite was named for Jennifer Lopez (Litarachna lopezae). Mr. Jagger already has a trilobite named for him (Aegrotocatellus jaggeri). So does his Rolling Stones colleague Keith Richards (Perirehaedulus richardsi). And yet another trilobite is named for Nanker Phelge (Aegrotocatellus nankerphelgeorum), a songwriting pseudonym the Stones used in their early days. And though Ms. Jolie was passed over this time, she need not feel left out: there is a spider (Aptostichus angelinajolieae) named for her.


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