?And we’re not talking about the Beatles. For some reason, people like to name newly-discovered species after rock musicians. In LiveScience.com, Jeanna Bryner reports that a new species of beetle has been named after rock star Roy Orbison, because it looks like it’s wearing a tuxedo. Bryner reports that “in 2005, [entomologist Quentin] Wheeler?discovered 65 new species of slime-mold beetle?They named one of the beetles after Darth Vader and others for President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.”
The dinosaurs are long gone (except now they are birds), but beetles, which evolved on the earth at the same time dinosaurs did, are still around in basically the same form they were then (and will probably still be here after humans? AND birds?are gone).
In BBC News, Anna-Marie Lever writes that most of the beetle species we see have been around since the dinosaurs. They probably evolved at same time flowering plants did, around 140 million years ago. Lever quotes researcher Johannes Bergsten as saying, “Beetles have a good track record of being around for some 300 million years, and are still prosperous. I think they will be around for a long time to come”?longevity that few rock stars achieve.
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Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
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