Joe Strummer Now Has a Namesake Snail

The scientific rule is this: you discover it, you get to name it. As long as some basic tenets of scientific nomenclature are followed (Latin rules, rules of species and phyla, etc.), you can call your new thing whatever you want.

Alviniconcha is a genus of spiky-looking golf ball-sized sea snails that hang out near hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, sometimes as far as  11,500 feet down. It’s dark, hot, acidic and generally extreme. But because the discoverers thought that this…

….reminded them of this…

…that this new species of sea snail will now forever be known as Alviniconcha strummeri.

Read more at the Santa Cruz Sentinel (via Tom).