Taxonomic humor

[droserary]

As pointed out to me by a friend, taxonomists can have a bit of fun when naming new species. For your amusement, I submit the following:

Starting off with an obvious one, we have an agnostid trilobite whose scientific name is Han solo. Fictional names in scientific taxa are common ("beeblebroxi" is a specific epithet of at least two different

Comments

[urbpan]

That's pretty cool! I'm surprised that some of those got through whatever obstacles to whimsy there are in nomenclature guidelines.

[droserary]

There really are no obstacles except agreement in gender with genus and species. If they're named after a person or region, it's especially easy to create an interesting combination between genus and species. An eyebrow or two may be raised, but once validly published there's not much anyone can do unless they realign the taxonomy by moving all species to a different, older genus. I bet most taxonomists just sit back and giggle.

[txtriffidranch]

You used to have complaints, and then everyone started realizing that interesting names were a great tie-in for news articles. I hate to say it, but nobody would care if you named a wasp, beetle, or midge after deceased specialists in the field. Name them after the Grateful Dead, Donald Rumsfeld, or Gary Larson, though...

[txtriffidranch]

Me, I always loved how only three of the four Beatles have trilobites named after them, but all five of the Sex Pistols and all seven of the Ramones got the honor. And then there's my plan, if I find any of the remains of the dromaeosaur that used to wander through the Dallas area about 90 million years ago, to introduce the world to Harlanosaurus ellisoni.