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One crawled across the rain-soaked soil of what is now Texas more than 270 million years ago, possibly feeding on fast-moving insects. The other endeared himself to millions as a banjo-playing traveling newscaster and reluctant boyfriend of Miss Piggy, known as Kermit the Frog.
Now they share a name.
On Thursday, scientists announced that they had named a recently identified ancient ancestor of modern amphibians Kermitops gratus after Kermit the frog.
Although it couldn’t sing “Rainbow Connection” or deliver the news, the salamander-like species seemed to bear a striking resemblance to the beloved Muppet, said Calvin So, Ph.D. student in the biological sciences department at George Washington University, who helped name him.
The combination of bones in his eye socket gave him a “bulging-eyed appearance” like Kermit’s, and his three-centimeter-long fossilized skull, slightly crushed, appeared to have “a crooked smile,” reminiscent of Kermit’s shy smile. Kermit, Mx. Then he said.
“It really made us look like Kermit was smiling at us,” Mx said. Thus, the lead author of an article describing the new species, published Thursday in the journal Zoological journal of the Linnaean society. The name combines “Kermit” and the Greek suffix “-ops,” which means face.
The fossilized skull was unearthed near Kemp Lake in Texas in 1984, Mx. Then he said. It was in the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington until 2021, when one of Mx. So’s co-authors Arjan Mann and some other paleontologists noticed it and recognized that it could be a new species, Mx. He then said.
Max. Thus he said that the snout was longer than the back of its skull, which greatly differentiated it from other fossil amphibians of its type. The shape might have made the species especially adept at catching fast-moving insects to feed, Mx. Then he said.
“It increases our knowledge of amphibian diversity at that time,” they said. And the name, Mx. That said, it could get people interested in prehistoric creatures other than dinosaurs.
“I wanted to draw attention and change the way people relate to science and fossils,” Mx said. Then he said. “It would be really fantastic if a lot more people really joined the research into the origins of amphibians because it’s an area of the tree of life that’s not very well studied.”
The species was just the latest scientific discovery to emerge from obscurity with a famous name.
Last year, scientists at a German research institute who discovered that certain bacterial compounds kill fungi named them keanumycins, after actor Keanu Reeves in his starring role in the “John Wick” thriller franchise.
Scientists have named the insects after Arnold Schwarzenegger and RuPaul, while one species of dinosaur was named Dracorex hogwartsia, or the dragon king of Hogwarts, after Hogwarts School from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series. according the Natural History Museum, London.
The Muppets have also served as inspiration. A trilobite is named after the grumpy duo of Statler and Waldorfand a tubular spider It was named in honor of Gonzo, the museum said.
Despite Mx. Such is the enthusiasm for the new species, they said they weren’t always big fans of the Muppets. “Personally,” Mx So said, “I thought some of the Muppets were a little scary.”