CARL BUELL
In the foreground, the carnivorous lizard Palaeosaniwa stalks a pair of hatchling Edmontosaurus as the snake Cerberophis and the lizard Obamadon look on. In the background, an encounter between T. rex and Triceratops.
President Obama has had everything named after him from streets to schools… but now an extinct lizard?
The team of scientists from Yale and Harvard paid an unusual tribute to Obama in a paper looking at the survival rate of lizards and snakes in the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs.
“Obamadon gracilis” is one of several previously unreported species identified in the paper, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The small lizard they named after the president is “distinguished by tall, slender teeth with large central cusps separated from small accessory cusps by lingual grooves.”
In supplementary material, the scientists had some fun with the etymology of the new name.
“The genus name refers to Barack Hussein Obama and odon (Greek) = tooth, in reference to the tall, straight teeth, and the manner in which Mr. Obama has acted as a role model of good oral hygiene for the world,” the team wrote. . . .
The team of scientists from Yale and Harvard paid an unusual tribute to Obama in a paper looking at the survival rate of lizards and snakes in the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs.
“Obamadon gracilis” is one of several previously unreported species identified in the paper, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The small lizard they named after the president is “distinguished by tall, slender teeth with large central cusps separated from small accessory cusps by lingual grooves.”
In supplementary material, the scientists had some fun with the etymology of the new name.
“The genus name refers to Barack Hussein Obama and odon (Greek) = tooth, in reference to the tall, straight teeth, and the manner in which Mr. Obama has acted as a role model of good oral hygiene for the world,” the team wrote. . . .
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/scientists-extinct-lizard-president-obama-article-1.1217655#ixzz2Em9Yp1dW
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