Researchers in South Australia unearthed a fossil of a disc-shaped tiny creature that lived in the ocean over 500 million years ago. They named it Obamus coronatus after former American President Barack Obama to honour his passion for science.
The discovery, by researchers at the University of California-Riverside and the South Australia Museum, took place in a newly excavated fossil bed located in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges that has been dubbed “Alice’s Restaurant Bed”, borrowing a lyric from the Arlo Guthrie song that says “you can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.”
Professor of paleontology Mary Droser, who led the research, told the Washington Post that the Obama moniker was bestowed upon the creature because it reminded researchers of an ear, something that avid Obama watchers and cartoonists will know was one of the former president’s more obvious characteristics.
Alice’s Restaurant Bed is teeming with prehistoric fossils from the Ediacaran Biota, a group of soft-bodied animals representing some of the earliest lifeforms on Earth. Scientists are able to visualize their traits and physiology in the Ranges due to their remarkable preservation in fine-grain sandstone.
Not only was Obama honored, but a second ocean floor dweller discovered in the same bed was named after famed naturalist Sir David Attenborough. That creature — Attenborites janeae — was even smaller, less than a centimeter across and shaped like an egg, complete “with ridges and grooves giving it a raisin-like appearance.”
Credit : CNet
Picture Credit : Google
