A research team from Karlsruhe and the USA has named a previously unknown species of fossil annelid after the massive sandworms in the Desert Planet novels. The group discovered the annelid in rocks in northeastern Utah, about 506 million years old. The primeval animal got its name Shaihuludia shurikeni based on the sandworms in Frank Herbert’s novel series, which are called Shai-Hulud there.
His colleague Rhiannon LaVine (University of Kansas) is an extreme science fiction fan, said Julien Kimmig, paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Karlsruhe, the German Press Agency. “As soon as we found it, she suggested the name.” However, the environment of the annelid at that time had nothing to do with desert sand, explained Kimmig. “It was very muddy.” The worm lived on the ocean floor.
According to the museum, the shurikeni part of the name comes from the Japanese word for throwing star – shuriken – and refers to the appearance of the fossil. The results of the research were recently published in the journal “Historical Biology”.
