Ridiculous Scientific Names #7 - The Horseshoe Crab Named After Darth Vader

If you are a hardcore fan of mine you might remember that post I made a month ago about a couple of animals named after Darth Vader, the famous Dark Sith Lord. Now, a new one comes to be added on the list, and this time the resemblance is uncanny:

Photo of Vaderlimulus fossil horseshoe crab (credit)

Meet Vaderlimulus tricki, a 245 million-year-old fossil horseshoe crab that was recently discovered near Paris, Idaho, USA . As you can see in the photo above, the creature's head is reminiscent of Darth Vader helmet, hence the generic name "Vaderlimulus". As for the specific name, it's in honor of Trick Runions, the man who first found the fossil.

Today, there are 4 extant horsecrab species which are considered "living fossils", meaning that their appearance has remained virtually the same in the passing of time, despite having an evolutionary history of more than 450 million years. Although most horseshoe crab species look pretty much the same, whether we talk about extinct or extant species, Vaderlimulus tricki stands outs thanks to its unusual appearance:

“Vaderlimulus, however, has unusual body proportions that give it an odd appearance.” said Allan J Lerner, lead author of the paper where the new species was described.

According to the authors of the study, Vaderlimulus belonged to an extinct family, the Austrolimulidae, members of which were trying to expand from marine to freshwater habitats. 

Since all surviving species are marine, we can safely conclude that this effort failed miserably. The family was also characterized by "Heightened enlargement and proportional reduction of body elements, sometimes resulting in bizarre forms" and the discovery "provides additional fossil evidence of this evolutionary process. Vaderlimulus likely inhabited a shallow, possibly transitional freshwater coastal setting in the Moenkopi depositional basin along the western Pangean coastal margin. " [source]

Drawing of Vaderlimulus (credit)

 The fossil was 4 inches long (10 cm) and comes to us from from the Triassic, which lasted 251 million to 199 million years ago.

There's not much else to say about this fossil species, so here is a cool fact you might not know. Did you know horseshoe crabs actually have blue blood? And did you know we actually collect them to harvest their blood in special facilities? And did you know that 1 liter of their blood costs about 15.000 $? How do we use it and why is it so expensive? Check this amazing video by SciShow to learn all the answers:

More Ridiculously Named Animals

Didn't have enough? Ok! Here are some more animals with stupid names: 

• Pink Floyd Shrimp And Animals Named After Harrison Ford
• Darth Vader's and Arnold Schwarzenegger's Beetles
• Animals Named After Donald Trump
• The Bernie Sanders Spider 
• Tritonia khaleesi, Queen of the Nudibranches and the Sea Slugs 
• A beetle called Hitler