I think they should name a few snakes after him, too. And, maybe a toad. A remarkable range of reptiles lived in the last days of the dinosaurs: tiny lizards, a snake the size of a boa constrictor, six-foot long iguanas, carnivorous lizards the lurked in the swamps of whatâs now Montana. Among them: Obamadon gracilis, a newly identified lizard named in honor of President Barack Obama. "Lizards and snakes rivaled the dinosaurs in terms of diversity, making it just as much an 'Age of Lizards' as an 'Age of Dinosaurs,'" explained Nicholas R. Longrich, a postdoctoral associate with Yale's Department of Geology and Geophysics, who named Obamadon. The name comes from Latin: odon means "tooth" and gracilis means "slender." "It is a small polyglyphanodontian [one of the most diverse lizard branches] distinguished by tall, slender teeth with large central cusps separated from small accessory cusps by lingual grooves," the researchers write of Obamadon, which is known primarily from the jaw bones of two specimens. Longrich said the creature likely measured less than one foot long and probably ate insects. Longrich said no one should impute any political significance to the decision to name the extinct lizard after the recently re-elected U.S. president: "We're just having fun with taxonomy." Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012...rd-after-obama/?intcmp=features#ixzz2El7qMp4k
Obamadon is the little blue lizard on the left. <img src="http://global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/img/Scitech/Obamadon%20lizard.jpg" height=180 width=330>