Lemmy honour as Jurassic crocodile renamed
IN life he was big, ugly and full of attitude – no wonder scientists chose to name the ferocious Jurassic crocodile after Lemmy.
Like the hell-raising Motorhead frontman, who grew up in Anglesey and died in 2015, the 19ft-long (5.8m) beast dubbed Lemmysuchus was no stranger to trouble.
The monster that terrorised coastal waters around the UK more than 145 million years ago had a skull measuring just over a metre and large, blunt teeth for crushing bones and turtle shells. A fossil skeleton of one was dug up in a clay pit near Peterborough in 1909 and then housed at London’s Natural History Museum.
After conducting a study, University of Edinburgh palaeontologist Michela Johnson realised it had been wrongly classified and needed a new scientific name.
The suggestion to honour heavy metal bass player Lemmy came from Natural History Museum curator and Motorhead 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. I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to immortalise the rock star in this way.”
Lemmysuchus belonged to an extinct group of reptiles called teleosaurs, which were distantly related to today’s crocodiles.