The 44th American President Barack Obama has earned himself another honor (after the American presidency and the Noble prize for peace). He now has a lizard species named after him i.e Obamadon.
The small insect eating lizard lived about 65 million years ago but was wiped out with the rest of the dinosaurs. It was discoverd in 1974 in Montana. The lizard was earlier classified as Leptochamops denticulatus but recent study showed that it was actually a new species.
It was not the president’s dynamic personality that urged the researcher at the Yale University to give the lizard his name. It was rather his toothy smile.
The name given to the lizard is ‘Obamadon Gracilis’. Where ‘Obamadon’ means Obama’s teeth and Gracilis means slender.
“The lizard has these very tall, straight teeth and Obama has these tall, straight incisors and a great smile,” said Nick Longrich, a paleontologist at the school in New Haven, Connecticut.
The researchers had to wait until the American elections to name the lizard.
“It would look like we were kicking him when he’s down if he lost and we named this extinct lizard after him,” Nick Longrich.