An international team of paleontologists has just published a scientific paper on extinct brittle stars (that is, the ‘snakier cousins’ of sea stars). The fossils were excavated out of rocks from the Silurian Period (c. 444 to 419 million years ago) exposed on the island of Gotland, Sweden.

Okay, but why the hell would the fine readers of BraveWords care, you might ask. Well, because many of the species proved to be new to science and had to be formally described and named, the authors chose to honor a whole slew of influential and inspiring people from the realms of heavy music!

This means that the paper, published in European Journal of Taxonomy, includes species with names derived not only from musicians and bands such as Kansas, Doro, Archspire, Immolation, Obituary, Ian Paice of Deep Purple, Tomas Haake of Meshuggah, and John Bonham (RIP) of Led Zeppelin, but also ‘metal painters’ Pär Olofsson and Joe Petagno, and journalists/writers Joel McIver and Sephora and Tim Henderson of BraveWords.

Says study author Ben Thuy: “We had a lot of fun with this study, also by placing the different species in ‘correct’ chronological order that follows both the evolution of successive species and that of metal music.”

Says study author Lea Numberger-Thuy: “Yeah, one example would be having Obituary at the base of the evolutionary lineage (that is, the oldest species) and Archspire at the top. Meaning that we go from the origins of death metal to an extreme version of that same lineage.”  

Says study author Mats E. Eriksson: “Due to the massive influence of metal music in this paleontology paper, we jokingly referred to it as ‘the most metal science paper of all time’ during the course of the study. That is probably not an exaggeration…”

Collectively, the authors have a long tradition of naming their extinct research subjects after their musical heroes (with examples ranging from Rammstein, Rotting Christ, and Avatar, to King Diamond, Alex Webster, and Lemmy Kilmister). While this might not be something that necessarily appeals to everybody, the authors simply want to honor people from the metal community that have had a massively positive, cultural impact in their lives, and to combine their love for nature and the arts.

Figure caption: Evolutionary tree of the Silurian “metal brittle stars”.

The reference for scientific paper is as follows: Thuy, B., Eriksson, M.E., Kutscher, M. & Numberger-Thuy, L.D. 2024: The beginning of a success story: basalmost members of the extant ophiuroid clade from the Silurian of Gotland, Sweden. European Journal of Taxonomy 947, 216–247.

The full paper can be accessed here.

(Top image caption: Pär Olofsson’s artistic reconstruction of specimens of Ophiolofsson in the process of feeding on a dead cephalopod. Given the etymology of the scientific name, this portrayal could be viewed as a “paleo self-portrait” by the painter.)