Scientists honor David Bowie by naming a 100-million-year-old wasp after David Bowie
David Bowie's memory is being preserved in a pretty unexpected way.
Nearly a year and a half after the "Space Oddity" singer's death, scientists have named a new, 100-million-year-old extinct species of wasps after him. The announcement was made in a paper in the latest edition of the Journal of Hymenoptera Research.
The wasp is now called Archaeoteleia astropulvis and, in case you can't translate it, "astropulvis" is a Latin translation for "star dust," a tribute to Bowie's famous alter ego "Ziggy Stardust."
Entomologists said the name "refers to the ancient source of the atoms that form our planet and its inhabitants and commemorates the late David Bowie alter ego, Ziggy Stardust."
The wasp was one of two different species preserved in Burmese amber. They were brought to the National Museum of Natural History by Longfeng Li, a student visiting from Capitol Normal University in Beijing. Both were previously unidentified, Phys.org reported.
You can check out the full study below.
This isn't the first time a species has been named after Bowie, though.
An endangered spider — Heteropoda davidbowie — was named after him a few years back, fitting for the musician who made "The Spiders From Mars" a thing.
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