Trilobite Named in Honor of Baxter

September 29, 2010 admin

Czech scientists named a new species of trilobite in honor of SF author Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee series. The pre-historic creature was discovered in the Czech republic; the derivatio nominis is Xeelee – “a legendary civilization of very advanced extraterrestrial beings forming a mainstay of [the] excellent science fiction sequence of Stephen Baxter.”

Baxter writes, “The beast itself looks like a woodlouse (to me), is about a centimetre long, and apparently was a big cheese about 50 million years ago. ‘This is very important species with surprisingly very advanced features just very close to the origin of entire group,’ they say. Quite an honour! For me, I mean, not the trilobite.”

http://www.trilobites.info/