An extinct lizard has been named after The Doors' singer Jim Morrison and will now been known as Barbaturex morrisoni.
The Doors' singer Jim Morrison was popularly known as "The Lizard King" because of a poem ("The Celebration of the Lizard") he wrote, which was even used in a song that appeared on The Doors' album "Waiting For The Sun." A line went "I am the Lizard King" and fans thought that Morrison was referring to himself rather than the fictitious character he had created for his poem. Ever since, the nickname stuck on.
Playing on that epithet, an extinct lizard has been named Barbaturex morrisoni which means "lizard king", after the legendary singer. The lizard roamed South East Asia some 36-40 million years ago and was unusually huge in size and scientists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln reveal that high temperatures could have been a reason for this.
Researchers said that these lizards competed with other mammals for food. After studying fossils of the reptile, paleontologists concluded that the Barbaturex morrisoni was the largest plant-eating lizard to have ever existed, having lived alongside other herbivorous and carnivorous mammals during the Eocene epoch.
Though modern day lizards are much smaller than other herbivores, falling prey to larger creatures, the Barbaturex morrisoni was larger than most carnivorous mammals and gave tough competition to them for food resources.
"Reptiles and mammals co-exist most places on the Earth today. What is interesting about the Lizard King is that it was a large vegetarian co-existing and competing with other herbivorous mammals," co-author Prof Russell Ciochon, from the University of Iowa, told BBC News. "Large lizards on the Earth today, such as Indonesia's Komodo Dragon, and in the past, such as the late Cretaceous Chinese Chianghsia nankangensis and the Pleistocene Australian Varanus priscus, are all carnivores. These large carnivorous lizards were eating the mammals they co-existed with, not competing with the mammals."
This is not the first time this year that a creature has been named after a celebrity. Earlier in May, a 505 million years old fossil of an extinct creature with 'scissor hand-like' claws has been named Kooteninchela deppim after actor Johnny Depp for his role in the 1990 movie, "Edward Scissorhands"
