A newly discovered fossilized vampire squid has been named after the US president, Joe Biden, a team of paleontologists has announced.
The Syllipsimopodi bideni, which has been described as an “incredibly rare” fossil, was first dug up in Montana and then donated to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada in 1988.
But it sat untouched in a drawer for decades until a scientist pulled it out for a closer look.
Speaking to the New York Times, Christopher Whalen, a paleontologist from New York’s American Museum of Natural History, said he first noticed the squid’s preserved arms and saw small suckers in the rock.
“This was sitting in a museum since the 80s and no one realized it was important,” said Whalen. “We chanced on that importance because I happened to notice the arm suckers.”
The Syllipsimopodi bideni drifted across oceans nearly 328m years ago. According to Whalen, it is the oldest known ancestor of vampyropods, a group that includes vampire squids and octopuses.
The fossil’s first name translates roughly to “prehensile foot”, since it has 10 arms and is the oldest known cephalopod to have suckers on each of its arms. Modern vampire squids, which are not squids but close relatives to the octopus, have eight arms and two stringy filaments.
According to the paper, the fossil even appeared to contain a preserved ink sac.
Whalen, along with Neil Landman, a curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, described the new species in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday.
Their decision to name the squid after Biden came as they were “encouraged by his plans to address climate change and to fund scientific research”, Whalen said in an email to the New York Times.
The Syllipsimopodi bideni is not the first species to be named after a president. Nine species were named after Barack Obama, including a spider, a hairworm and several fish. A moth and a blind worm-like amphibian that buries its head in the sand were named after Donald Trump.
• This article was amended on 10 March 2022 to correct the name of the Royal Ontario Museum.
