Fearsome Jurassic Crocodile Named After MOTÖRHEAD's LEMMY
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According to the web site of London, England's Natural History Museum, British scientists have named the fossil of a fierce giant crocodile from the Jurassic era after late MOTÖRHEAD frontman Lemmy.
Lemmysuchus obtusidens lived around 164 million years ago during the Middle Jurassic Period and was a member of an extinct group of marine crocodile relatives called teleosaurs.
"With a meter-long skull and a total length of 5.8 metres, it would have been one of the biggest coastal predators of its time," says University of Edinburgh palaeontologist Michela Johnson, who helped to untangle the identity of Lemmysuchus.
The specimen, housed in the Natural History Museum, was dug up by collectors in the early twentieth century from a clay pit quarry near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. However, it was incorrectly categorized with the remains of other sea crocodiles found in the same location.
In a study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, an international team of scientists took a fresh look at the fossil skeleton and gave it a new classification and scientific name.
The name was suggested by Natural History Museum curator and MOTÖRHEAD fan Lorna Steel.
She said: "Although Lemmy passed away at the end of 2015, we'd like to think that he would have raised a glass to Lemmysuchus, one of the nastiest sea creatures to have ever inhabited the Earth.
"As a long-standing MOTÖRHEAD fan, I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to immortalize the rock star in this way."
