Those who look at Jon Snow with heart-eyes and despise Cersei unequivocally are the true fans of the HBO fantasy series ‘Game of Thrones‘. The channel recently declared its return in April 2019 and the wait seems fairly long for such fans.
Meanwhile, fans of this series are creating news in interesting ways. Brett Ratcliffe, a University of Nebraska etymologist and professor, named three of the eight newly discovered beetles species after ‘Game of Thrones’ characters. Ratcliffe, who is known to have named 200 species of Scarab beetles, said in an interview to The Ohama World-Herald, “When you create names like these, you do it to gain a little bit of notoriety and public attention to it.”
Each of the species of beetles belongs to the Gymnetis genus. They were named after the three dragons of Daenerys Targaryen – Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion. The Latin versions of the names are Drogoni, Rhaegali and Viserioni are the official names of these beetles.
According to the World-Herald, the Drogoni and Viserioni species can be found in Columbia and Ecuador while Rhaegal can only be spotted in French Guiana.
Ratcliffe believes that the pop-culture-themed names will bring awareness about the world’s unknown species and biodiversity.
“I’ve often thought that scientists take themselves too seriously,” says Nebraska entomologist. So he named three new beetle species after dragons from “Game of Thrones.” https://t.co/HgHFNF93zw
— AP Central U.S. (@APCentralRegion) December 30, 2018
