Live Science has a story about a new species of horseshoe crab. The crab lived during the Triassic Period about 245 million years ago. It was discovered by ESCONI member Trick Runions and is called Vaderlimulus tricki. The name stems from the shape of the head shield, which resembles the helmet worn by Darth Vader from the Star Wars film series. A team from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History in Albuquerque named the specimen and published a paper in the current issue of the German paleontological journal Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie.
The fossil of an ancient "Star Wars" Sith Lord from a long time ago, but not quite so far, far away, was recently unearthed, a new study reports. Fossilized remains of an extinct species of horseshoe crab, named after Darth Vader because the animal's bizarre shape resembles the "Star Wars" character's iconic helmet, were discovered in Idaho.
Researchers dubbed the newly discovered, 4-inch-long (10 centimeters) horseshoe crab Vaderlimulus tricki. The species name tricki honors the man who found the fossil, Trick Runions, who is part of the citizen science Dinosaur Trackers Research Group at the University of Colorado Denver.
