Ten Creatures Named for Entertainers

Last month, scientists announced they'd named a species of prehistoric bird for Memphis punk-country group Lucero. That got us thinking: how many other creatures out there carry the names of well-known troubadours? Turns out there are a lot more than you might guess. Here are 10 of our favorites:

1. Bishophina mozarti, named for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
It'll take something larger than a sea flea to encompass the legacy this 18th-century composer left behind, but the Bishophina mozarti is a start. B. mozarti is an ostracod, also known as a seed shrimp. These tiny crustaceans can be as small as 1mm long.

2. Masiakasaurus knopfleri, named for Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler
Oh, for the carefree life of a paleontologist, extracting fossils all day. Maybe get a blister on your little finger, maybe get a blister on your thumb. Paleontologist Dr. Scott D. Sampson's team discovered this terrifying specimen in Madagascar in 2001. "Whenever we played Dire Straits in the quarry, we found more Masiakasaurus," he says. "And when we played something else, we didn't." Seems fitting, no?

3. Cryptocercus garciai, named for Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia
Discovered by three Kansas State University scientists in the forests of northern Georgia in 1998, this wood-munching roach carries the legacy of the Dead's iconic nine-fingered axe-wielder. Burnside, Smith and Kambhampati explained their choice in a scholarly article for the World Wide Web Journal of Science: "What a long, strange trip it's been."

4. Metallichneumon neurospatarchus, named for Metallica album Master of Puppets
The ichneumon family of wasps spends its larval stage as a parasite, paralyzing its cockroach host by injecting venom into the bug's brain. Dr. David Wahl, who discovered this species with Dr. Karen Sime in 2002, displayed a slightly morbid sense of humor when he named this wasp "neurospatarchus." The Latin word translates to "master of puppets."

5. Norasaphus monroeae, named for Marilyn Monroe
Nothing says sex symbol like the head of a prehistoric monsterbug.  British paleontologist Richard Fortey named one of his favorite fossils, a trilobite, after one of American pop culture's most stunning icons. He says he was inspired by N. monroeae's "hourglass-shaped glabellum," which is part of the creature's head.

6. Mackenziurus johnnyi, M. joeyi, M. deedeei, M. ceejayi
There seem to be plenty of trilobite species to go around. There's one named after Miles Davis, The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Having trouble figuring out who the four above were named after? Try this.

7. Hyla stingi, named for Sting
When he's not busy dreaming of gardens in the desert sand and writing some of the best songs we've ever heard, former Police frontman Sting spends some of his time saving the rainforest. In recognition of his efforts on behalf of the environment, scientists named this species of Columbian tree frog after him.

8. Preseucoila imallshookupis, named for Elvis Presley
"My friends say I'm acting wild as a bug," The King sang on "All Shook Up." We doubt the bug he had in mind was the gall wasp, but that's the creepy crawly entomologist Matthew Buffington chose to carry on the name of the hip-swinging star. Surely P. imallshookupis doesn't have a hairdo as good as this guy, nicknamed "Elvisaurus" for his pompadour-like crest.

9. Heteropoda davidbowie, named for David Bowie
You might expect a giant, hairy yellow spider to indeed come from Mars, but this one's from a little closer to home: Malaysia. Last year, Bowie received one of the most lasting tributes to his career when German scientist Peter Jäger named this spider after the rock legend who brought us Ziggy Stardust. 

10. Zappa genus; Amaurotoma zappa; Oenonites zappae; Pachygnatha zappa; Phialella zappai, all named for, you guessed it, Frank Zappa
Metallica's wasp may have a clever name and Bowie's spider may be the most aptly-chosen fauna, but no one has inspired more animal names than Frank Zappa. Zappa's honorific legacy is as broad as his musical one, reaching as far back as the Permian period (A. zappa, an ancient shellfish) and as far from home as the Fly River in Papua New Guinea (the Zappa genus of goby fish, named "in honour of Frank Zappa for his articulate and sagacious defense of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution"). An Italian jellyfish expert's plot to meet Zappa went according to plan after he named P. zappai after him. P. zappa is an orb-weave spider, so named because the men who discovered it thought the markings on its underbelly resembled Zappa's mustache.