Effigia okeeffeae
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Effigia okeeffeae was an archosaur that lived in what is now New Mexico. The six-foot-long (2-meter) fossil was discovered by Edwin H. Colbert in blocks of rock from the Ghost Ranch Quarry, which were excavated in 1947 and 1948.
The fossil was rediscovered in January 2006 by graduate student Sterling Nesbitt at the American Museum of Natural History, who was looking for Coelophysis fossils. Nesbitt and Mark Norell, curator at the museum, named it Effigia okeeffeae in January 2006 after Georgia O'Keefe, who spent many years at Ghost Ranch (her ashes are scattered there).
[edit] Cultural References
In a January 30, 2006 episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert satirically touted the fossil as disproving the "Darwinlutionists" ("who try to claim that every kind of creature had evolved from monkeys"). Colbert also believes that the fossil should not have been named after Georgia O'Keeffe, whose paintings scare the hell out of him, and instead should have been named after Edwin H. Colbert (see List of The Colbert Report episodes).
[edit] Sources
- (English) MSNBC Story
