A 19-million-year-old species of “long-legged pig” has been named after Mick Jagger. The extinct anthracotheres, discovered at a sand-covered site in remote Egypt, was dubbed Jaggermeryx naida — Jagger’s water nymph.



“I’m a huge Stones fan,” admitted Ellen Miller, who co-authored the water nymph paper in September’s Journal of Paleontology. According to an article published by Wake University, where Miller is an associate professor, the researchers wanted to choose a name that acknowledged the creature’s unique snout. Its “highly innervated muzzle with mobile and tactile lips” clearly evoked the Stones singer, Miller argued.



Although some lab-mates campaigned for the water nymph to be named after Angelina Jolie’s mouth-parts, co-author Gregg Gunnell sided with Miller. “[I was] a huge Rolling Stones fan in my day,” he told the New York Times.



The Jaggermeryx naida was catalogued and canonised after its fossilised jaw fragments were found in an Egyptian desert. Despite its arid state in 2014, the area was once an estuary full of swamps and marshes; the remains of catfish, turtles and waterbirds were all found nearby. “We imagine [the water nymph’s] lifestyle was like that of a water deer, standing in water and foraging for plants along the river bank,” Miller said. Likened to a lanky pig or a skinny hippo, the Jaggermeryx naida had a super-sensitive lower lip and snout, ringed by special nerve endings.



Miller and Gunnell’s fossils have now been added to collections at Duke University, the Cairo Geological Museum and Cairo University. If curators so chose, they could possibly assemble a prehistoric Stones set: the rockers have already been recognised via three species of trilobites, the Aegrotocatellus jaggeri, Perirehaedulus richardsi, and Aegrotocatellus nankerphelgeorum, named for the band’s early pseudonym.

