This Sounds Like Throwing Shade

Normally, when someone discovers a creates a creature, and names it after someone, it is an expression of admiration, see the chewing lice specific to owls, Strigiphilus garylarsoni, named after the creator of The Far Side.

That being said, when paleontologists discovered a fossilized ancestor of the Vampire Squid, and decided to name it after Joe Biden, it feels like a subtle, or not so subtle, dis:

Paleontologists have identified the earliest known ancestor of the octopus and vampire squid — and named the newly discovered species after President Biden.

The more than 300-million-year-old fossilized Syllipsimopodi bideni, a vampyropod, was unearthed from the Bear Gulch Limestone in Montana and donated in 1988 to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada. There, it sat relatively unstudied until paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History slid it under a microscope.

They noticed that the fossil resembled an octopus and vampire squid, but with 10 arms instead of eight, two rows of tiny suckers and what appears to be an ink sac — the organ that produces the ink that octopuses and squid spray in self-defense when escaping from predators. The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Paleontologists have identified the earliest known ancestor of the octopus and vampire squid — and named the newly discovered species after President Biden.

The more than 300-million-year-old fossilized Syllipsimopodi bideni, a vampyropod, was unearthed from the Bear Gulch Limestone in Montana and donated in 1988 to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada. There, it sat relatively unstudied until paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History slid it under a microscope.

They noticed that the fossil resembled an octopus and vampire squid, but with 10 arms instead of eight, two rows of tiny suckers and what appears to be an ink sac — the organ that produces the ink that octopuses and squid spray in self-defense when escaping from predators. The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

 ………

Whalen said in an interview with The Washington Post that he and a colleague were studying the fossil around the time Biden was elected president, so they named it Syllipsimopodi bideni, after Biden, to commemorate the start of his presidency and raise awareness for his climate change policies.

I'd be happy if someone named a chewing lice after me, or a round worm, but a fossilized vampire squid?  That makes me paranoid.