It ’s a great award for any naturalist to have a species named after them , and while David Attenborough may already have afew under his belt , his latest gain is a veridical beauty . A rare fossil that has freeze almost an entire mallet in time was found , after much consideration , to be a new - to - skill mintage of frog - legged beetle . Retrieved from what was once the Eocene Green River Formation in northwest Colorado , the arresting specimen has been dubbedPulchritudo attenboroughi , or Attenborough ’s stunner , or so 49 million days after its demise .
“ Nobody imparts the grandeur and beauty of nature more impressively than Sir David , ” said Frank Krell , Denver Museum of Nature & Science Senior Curator of Entomology , in astatement . “ This fogy , unparalleled in its preservation and beauty , is an apt specimen to honour such a great man . ”
Krell and Colorado - source Francesco Vitali , National Museum of Natural History of Luxembourg Invertebrate Zoology Collections Curator , worked together to distinguish this new metal money in a report print in the journalPapers in Palaeontology .
What ’s perhaps most noteworthy about the specimen is its nigh - perfect conservation . beetle are toughened critters with some extant species being able to survive being run over by a storage tank , but generally speaking , they rarely star in the best fossil . After it die , atomic number 15 attenboroughitook to the waters of the Eocene Green River Formation before sinking into the sediment . While most mallet tend to issue forth aside at this stage , with their cadaver being maintain as individual wing cases , this peculiar all in beetle held true .
Why ? Thanks to the in particular favorable condition find at deposits known as lagerstätten , which are base to the kind of very well - grained sediment that delivers very well preserved and sometimes almost complete fossils like Attenborough ’s Beauty . The Eocene Green River Formation is one such deposit and so is a pat hand at keep the creme de la creme of ossified beasties .
“ This is one of the most magnificent beetle fossil ever constitute , ” say Krell . “ The patterning is preserved in unexcelled clarity and contrast , making this one of the best - uphold beetle fogy . It is most emphatically deserving of its name . ”
While the species is novel to science the fogey is not , having been on show in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science ’s “ Prehistoric Journey ” exhibition since 1995 . Here , it was pronounce as a longhorn mallet for many years but Krell and Vitali noticed some characteristics that were n’t typical of these mallet so did some snooping . Sure enough , the two expose the beetle ’s true identity as a frog - legged leaf beetle owe to its arc legs .
