Ancient 'Lizard King' Named After The Doors' Jim Morrison

One of the biggest lizards ever known to roam on land, a 6-foot-long, 68 pound reptile that lived up to 40 million years ago, has been named after Jim Morrison, the frontman of iconic rock band The Doors.

Morrison, who penned the line "I am the lizard king, I can do anything" for his 1970 epic poem Celebration of the Lizard, came to be described in epithets as the Lizard King. Morrison died in Paris in 1971 under mysterious circumstances.

The newly-named Barbaturex morrisoni, is a soft play on words. "Barbaturex" means bearded king and "morrisoni" means Morrison. Though other ancient creatures do have "morrisoni" in their scientific names, the scientist who named Barbaturex morrisoni made it clear he had Jim Morrison in mind.

"You've got to figure out a name that fits," said Jason Head, a paleontologist with the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, told the Washington Post.

Once Head and his colleagues realized how big the lizard was and noticed that the reptile likely had a prominent flap of skin on its neck, the idea to call it the beaded king came to mind.

"I was listening to The Doors quite a bit during the research," Head said in a press statement. "Some of their musical imagery includes reptiles and ancient places, and Jim Morrison was of course 'The Lizard King,' so it all kind of came together."

The ancient lizard king roamed the tropical forests of Southeast Asia when it was alive, but while the fossils used to identify Barbaturex morrisoni were originally found in Burma, they were taken back to the U.S. and placed in a museum collection, where they remained for nearly half a century before being thoroughly examined by Head and his colleagues in 2006.

Head said that a researcher at University of California Museum of Paleontology suggested that he take a look at the relatively unexamined fossils. Upon close examination, Head noticed the lizard had several bone features present in much smaller, modern lizards.

"I thought, 'That's neat. Based on its teeth, it's a plant-eating lizard from a time period and a place from which we don't have a lot of information,'" Head recalled. "But when I started studying its modern relatives, I realized just how big this lizard was. It struck me that we had something here that was quite large -- and unique."

Finding the new species of giant lizard raises as many questions as it answers. Head speculated that since the giant lizard thrived in a warm tropical world where the planet did not have ice caps at its poles, recent trends in global warming may mean one day giant lizards may once again roam the Earth.

But his speculation also raised a word of caution.

"But we're changing the atmosphere so fast that the rate of climate change is probably faster than most biological systems can adapt to. So instead of seeing the growth and spread of giant reptiles, what you might see is extinction," he said, suggesting more species may go the way of both Jim Morrison and the ancient Lizard King.