Coming Soon to a Museum Near You

When Jennifer Clack discovered a new fossil species, it was up to her to name it. Clack, a curator at England’s Cambridge University’s zoology museum, chose “Eucritta melanolimnetes” for the salamander-like, 333-million-year-old animal. The “critta”, she explains, is a diminutive for “critter”. The “melano” means “black” and “limnetes” is “lagoon”. All told, then, the English scientist says, the name translates to “the creature from the black lagoon”. Her colleagues are divided on the name. “Some of them really like it. Some of them are a bit sniffy,” she said. (AP) ...It’s so cool when science fiction predicts the future.