'Nastiest sea creature to ever inhabit Earth' named after Lemmy from Motorhead

He was the hell-raising, grizzled, frontman of Motorhead who took pride in his excessive harcore lifestyle and once invited fans to ‘Love Me Like a Reptile.’

So when paleontologists at the National History Museum were choosing a name for their new ferocious Jurassic sea-crocodile, Lemmy seemed the obvious choice.

‘Lemmysuchus’ - which translates as Lemmy’s Crocodile - was a giant 19ft (5.8m) predator, which was covered in thick armour and was one of the most deadly marine creatures of its day, crunching down sea turtles with a snap of its giant jaws.

Lemmy, who died aged 70, in December 2015, was the founder, singer and bassist of Motorhead for 40 years, a band which took pride in its reputation for playing and living louder, faster and harder than any other group.

Likewise, his nightmare-inducing namesake, was bigger, faster and scarier than most sea creatures,  terrorising the shallow coastal waters around the UK more than 165 million years ago.

Its skull measured just over a metre and large, blunt teeth perfect for crushing bones and shells.

A fossil skeleton of one of the creatures was dug up in a clay pit near Peterborough in 1909 and then housed at London's Natural History Museum (NHM), where it has remained largely unstudied ever since.

But a recent reexamination led experts to believe that the creature stood apart from the other sea crocodiles of its time, and so deserved a new name.

NHM Curator Lorna Steele said: “I’ve always been into heavy rock, and Motorhead are one of my favourite bands and since Lemmy died I have been keen to name something after him.

“I had found a small crocodile in Morocco and thought that would have to do, but then this one emerged and I thought ‘Oh My God!’ this is the nastiest, meanest, biggest sea-crocodile there was. So it was perfect.

“Sea crocs are extinct now, but they were once a massive group of their time and were dominant in the Middle Jurassic. You wouldn’t have wanted to come across one. They were far bigger than today’s crocodiles. These things were massive, with armoured plates on their back and belly.

“Although Lemmy passed away at the end of 2015, we’d like to think that he would have raised a glass to Lemmysuchus, one of the nastiest sea creatures to have ever inhabited the Earth.”

Lemmysuchus was a sea-going member of an extinct group called teleosaurs, common during the Jurassic Period but only distantly related to today’s crocodiles.

Sea crocodiles spent large amounts of time in the water, they probably clambered back onto land to lay eggs, researchers believe.

The specimen was recently studied by Michela Johnson, a current palaeontology PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, who realised it had been wrongly classified.

“Following careful anatomical comparison, and by referring to the main specimen held at the Natural History Museum, we could see that most of the previous finds were actually from relatives of Lemmysuchus rather than the species itself, and we were able to assign a new name,” added Miss Johnson.

Born Ian Kilmister in 1945 in Stoke-in-Trent, it was said Lemmy gained his nickname after constantly pestered people to “lemme a fiver”.

He began his music career as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix, before in 1971 joining Hawkwind, the psychedelic band which specialised in trying to induce fits in their audience through the use of ultra-low frequency soundwaves.

After being kicked out of the band when he was arrested for possession of amphetamine in 1975, Lemmy formed Motorhead with ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke and Phil ‘Philtyh Animal’ Taylor.

Originally christened “B*stard” the band changed its name to Motörhead after being warned they would never be allowed to play on Top Of The Pops.

They came to be cited in the Guinness Book of Records as the loudest band ever, and fostered a reputation for ear-splitting noise and amped-up excess.

In an interview with The Telegraph in 2002, Lemmy, whose song titles included Die You B*stard, Killed by Death, and Born To Raise Hell, confessed that one of his favourite bands was Abba and that he was “addicted” to PG Wodehouse.

He was also an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia claiming ‘the bad guys always have the best uniforms.’

The new description of Lemmysuchus was published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.