A Rock Star Name For An Ancient Animal

An ancient animal got a new name this week. This hooved mammal lived millions of years ago and it has one striking feature - a huge, fleshy jaw that inspired the title after Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger.

  The Jaggermeryx naida translates to “Jagger's water nymph.”   Wake Forest University researcher Ellen Miller is wild about the Rolling Stones and that's how this now extinct animal got its name, based on the band's singer, Mick Jagger.

"From one rock star to another rock star, it seemed really fitting," she says.

For years, Miller has been working on fossils from Egypt that date back 18 million years or more. It's arid desert land now, but back then, it was more like a tropical forest. The animal seemed somewhat like a deer or a pig, but Miller says they were intrigued by its unusual jaw.

"On each side of the midline of the jaw, there are eight what we call foramina or holes which are where the nerves pass through," Miller says.

That made the animal's mouth extra sensitive. By comparison a human's jaw only has one hole on each side.

So, did those extra nerves make the animal sing like Jagger? Who knows. But Miller says a feature like that would have been helpful to an animal that foraged along the riverbank for food.

"If you can imagine swampy, murky, muddy water, there's probably an advantage to having a super-sensitive snout to help you pick out your dinner," she says.

  Once the sensitive snout came into play, it started a discussion about naming it after a pouty celebrity. Angelina Jolie's name was among those thrown out. But for Miller, ever the Stones fan, Mick Jagger's famous lips were a natural connection.

Miller says she'd love to go back to Egypt, but for right now her work is focused on primate fossils from Kenya, where she says just maybe there's a fossil waiting to be found that can bear the name of Keith Richards.