A new fossil has been named after Sir David Attenborough

Researchers from Oxford, Leicester, Yale and Imperial College London opted to name a little crustacean found in ancient volcanic rock in Herefordshire after the nation’s favourite naturalist.

The crustacean is known as an arthropod – a group of animals that includes modern insects, spiders, shrimp, and crayfish, BBC news reports.

Cascolus Ravitis is the new find’s name and yes, before you ask, there is a connection to the Planet Earth narrator in there. Cascolus is a Latin version of the Old English equivalent of Attenborough.

Simples.

And there’s a further nod to Sir David in Rvitis too, as it’s a reference to the Roman name for Leicester. Sir David lived in the city with his family when his father worked at the university there, and it’s where he spent much of his time hunting down fossils himself.

“The biggest compliment that a biologist or palaeontologist can pay to another one is to name a fossil in his honour and I take this as a very great compliment”, Attenborough said.

He can add it to the list of things named after him, which now includes but is not limited to a pygmy grasshopper species, a long-beaked echidna, a rare butterfly, a flightless weevil, a dinosaur, a species of wildflower and that all important polar research ship.