New Big-Lipped Species Named After Mick Jagger

He's been part of the Rolling Stones for over 50 years, but now another stone has led to Mick Jagger lending his name to a new species.

Anthropologist and paleontologists from Wake Forest University discovered some fossils in the Egyptian desert belonging to a family of extinct hoofed animals called anthracotheres, but one creature was so distinct that they decided that it was a previously undescribed species.

Associate anthropology professor Ellen Miller said of the animal, described as a cross between a long-legged pig and a slender hippo: “We imagine its lifestyle was like that of a water deer, standing in water and foraging for plants along the river bank.”

In particular, in had nerves on either side of its jaw, giving it a hypersensitive lower lip and snout. Which is where Jagger comes in.

After much debate about whether the big-lipped beast should be named after Angelina Jolie, or Mick, they plumped for the latter, giving it the name Jaggermeryx naida, or Jagger's Water Nymph.

Jagger is far from the first celebrity to be honoured in this way - fellow musicians Mark Knopfler, Frank Zappa, Shakira and the Sex Pistols have all had species named after them. And, in fact, it's not even Jagger's first: Aegrotocatellus jaggeri is a trilobite and Anomphalus jaggerius is a type of snail.

We bet they all move like Jagger.

(Images: Wake Forest University/Rex)