New Dinosaur Named After the Eye of Sauron

SchrodingerZ writes "95 million years ago, the dinosaur Sauroniops pachytholus roamed northern Africa. Fossils, originally found in southern Morocco, only consisted of the upper skull, which included the eerie looking eye socket which resembles the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies. Using skull comparison, it is theorized the two-legged meat-eater would have been 40 feet tall, challenging the Tyrannosaurus Rex in height. More fossils are needed for a full analysis, but so far it is very clear this dinosaur towered over many."

No Resemblance at All in My Opinion

[eldavojohn]

the eerie looking eye socket which resembles the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies

Nowhere in the article did they say that. In fact, if you watch this Slate video [youtu.be] there's not much physically related between the extrapolated skeleton and the film adaptation of the Eye of Sauron -- however they did name the dinosaur after that deity/character. The reason they named it after Sauron is that all we know of this predator now is its eye (really just a piece of the socket) and the idea of a large predator being known only for its eye reminded the archeologists of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings.

I think the submitter was confused by the hyperlink in the article that was designed to generate more page clicks for NatGeo:

"The idea of a predator that is physically known only as its fierce eye reminded me of Sauron, in particular as depicted in Peter Jackson's movies," Cau explained. (See a picture of an alien planet that resembles the Eye of Sauron.)

(emphasis mine)

Re:No Resemblance at All in My Opinion

[DJRumpy]

I had a nerd-gasm for nothing?

Re:

[somersault]

Meh, I knew you were faking it anyway

Re:

[CreatureComfort]

Every nerd-gasm is sacred,
every nerd-gasm is great,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk [youtube.com]

Missed chance

[Fishead]

Should have called it "Sauronsaur".

Re:

[Tarlus]

Nah, that would be "Sauropeds."

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

how about Dinosauron?

Re:

[Tarlus]

Tyrannosauron?

Re:

[EnsilZah]

But then discussing Sauronsaur on Sauronsaur violence would be rendered utterly silly.

Naming creatures after fictional charactesr?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, the nerds HAVE taken over!

I won't worry until I start seeing names like "therewerenofuckingelvesathelmdeepiop".

Re:Naming creatures after fictional charactesr?

[Canazza]

Hanshotfirstatops

Spongiforma squarepantsii et al

[John Bokma]

http://www.curioustaxonomy.net/etym/fiction.html [curioustaxonomy.net] Enjoy!

Obligatory

[damien_kane]

How awesome dinosaurs are [xkcd.com]

New dinosaur!?

[SirGarlon]

I find it hard to wrap my mind around calling a 95 million year old fossil "new."

Re:

[SJHillman]

In the context of archeology/paleontology, "new" usually means "newly discovered" or "newly classified". Same for astronomy, geology and other fields that deal with time on a scale that makes the whole of human civilization the blink of a Sauroniops's eye.

Re:

[SirGarlon]

In fact, discovery of a new dinosaur would be proof that the dinosaur bones have been faked all along. :-)

Full circle

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Sauron was named after dinosaurs, so why not?

Lets name some trees aftwr treants, while we're at it, and name some hobbled kid Bilbo.

Re:

[fuzzybunny]

I thought it was because he was always so...saur on Mondays.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Full circle

[drinkypoo]

The fact that comments like this can get modded up highly is the reason why I'm still coming back to slashdot.

Re:

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah, you could bottle the virginity here and sell it to the rich and sexually jaded.

Re:

[KingSkippus]

Really? This tired old joke yet again? You're going with "Computer geeks can't get girls!" in this age when the name "Bill" is almost always followed by "and Melinda"? When Mark Zuckerberg is married, but if he weren't, he could probably walk into a room and pick any girl he wants? When geek girl is the new chic, and the goddess Felicia Day proudly proclaims, "I'm the One That's Cool [youtube.com]"?

The 1980s John Hughes geek caricatures called and want their stereotypes back, because I've got news for you: Nowadays,

Re:

[Desler]

Gates and Mark got those women by not being creepy, social retards like the vast majority of Slashdotters are. Felicia Day is also not a creepy, social retard.

Re:

[Richy_T]

Yes. Because creepy and socially retarded is just "moody and interesting" but without the billions of dollars.

Nasty...

[Kupfernigk]

I think we get that Tolkien had it in for technology, but he was hardly subtle about it. When I was interviewed for Durham, (UK university) I had a most interesting discussion with the college admissions tutor about C P Snow and the "two cultures" - the deep separation between science and the arts in the UK. He thought that people like Tolkien really did not understand civilisation at quite a deep level, and were afraid of technology because it had led to social mobility - the middle and upper classes didn't like the way that engineers and the companies they started made so much money, and they couldn't rely on "connections" to get their children into them - mathematical and practical ability was needed.

On this reading, Tolkien's creation of Sauron as an embodiment of evil is just the British class system at work.

All the "good guys" in Tolkien are one percenters; even the Baggins are very rich. So you could say that Tolkien was a kind of Republican shock-jock, he just didn't think of writing that Sauron was actually born in Kenya, and was a Muslim Communist.

I like the Terry Pratchett version [plot spoiler alert], in which the entire plot of LOTR turns out to have occurred in a backward, barbaric country, and missionaries are sent out to rescue the surviving Orcs.

Really?

[Kupfernigk]

You do know that he lived in Oxford, in an urban environment, and that the original of Fangorn is a small clump of trees in the Fellows' Garden of his college? Tolkien wanted a sanitised, managed environment; but he wanted other people to pay for it.

Re:

[tragedy]

Finally, (on topic), the estimation of the dinosaur (predator?) standing 40 feet tall is truly awe-inspiring and reminds me to be thankful of whatever changed to make animals smaller.

I thought that too, but it turns out it's not 40 feet tall, but 40 feet long. So, it's more on the same scale as T. Rex rather than towering over it.

Re:

[wisnoskij]

If I parented a dwarf I would totally call him Bilbo.

Re:

[Mindcontrolled]

If I parented a dwarf I would totally call him Bilbo.

Your nerd card, please. You are hereby sentenced to 6 months of remedial training in the systematics and taxonomy of Middle Earth species. You may reapply for your nerd card dependent on the success of your training.

Re:

[wisnoskij]

Real life Earth little people are not called hobbits, they are called dwarfs. But real life dwarfs are more likely to look like a hobbit. If I wanted the child to grow a large beard and work in a mine I would call him Gimli.

Re:

[EdIII]

If I wanted the child to grow a large beard and work in a mine I would call him Gimli.

Yes, but if you wanted him to be awesome, get all the chicks, and totally rule, you would have called him Thorin.

Re:

[mcgrew]

Why would you give a Dwarf a Hobbit name? Name hime Glowan or Gimly!

Re:

[ThatsMyNick]

Was just about to post this. Instead, I would say, give the parent some mod points.

eye bones connected to the head bones

[Dr. Tom]

One has only to look at the sclerotic plates found in the eyes of birds to realize that they are dinosaurs.

Not exactly

[Kupfernigk]

They are what some of the dinosaur lines evolved into.

Re:

[Richy_T]

Whut? Nonsense. Not that they aren't (at least closely related) but there's more to it than that.

Picture a T. Rex trying to put on the Ring

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, ahh...

Ooops.

Aaahhh.

DAMNIT!

A sequel to the movie

[concealment]

If you tell Peter Jackson, we'll get that Jurassic-Park-with-Hobbits tie-in movie we always wanted.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

If you tell Peter Jackson, we'll get that Jurassic-Park-with-Hobbits tie-in movie we always wanted.

Ahhh. Now we know what George Lucas is going to do with his $4 billion...

Re:

[Tarlus]

velociraptor-riding Nazgul with lightsabres

I think I own that t-shirt

Re:

[epSos-de]

Frodosaurus will be the winner of that film.

What "eerie looking eye socket"?

[wonkey_monkey]

Has the submitter just made this bit up?

eerie looking eye socket which resembles the Eye of Sauron

Firstly I'm not sure how much an eye socket could resemble the Eye of Sauron, except that it might be round, and secondly there's no mention or pictures of eye sockets in the article, so what gives?

Re:

[wonkey_monkey]

Oh, wait, here we go:

"The idea of a predator that is physically known only as its fierce eye reminded me of Sauron,"

So... yeah, not because it looked like Sauron, but because it had an eye.

Re:

[camperdave]

Here I was expecting some sort of bone blades on either side of the eye, and they haven't even got a complete eye socket. This is what I hate about paleontology. They get one tiny skull fragment and it's "New dinosaur found", "8 inch, razor sharp, serrated teeth, like steak knives", "Stood as tall as T-Rex". It's like someone feeling a few raindrops and going "storm of the century", "massive flooding expected", etc. Chill. You don't have enough data to make those claims. You probably don't even have

Wrong science

[gmuslera]

Now the next dinosaur movie/documentary about South African dinosaurs will be filmed in New Zealand.

Apple will sue

[gsgriffin]

as they believe that they have first rights to anything with an 'i' in

One Dinosaur to Rule them all...

[Tilgore Krout]

...One Dinosaur to find them,
One Dinosaur to bring them all and in the darkness eat them
In the Time of Cretaceous where the Shadows lie.

Paleontology has come full circle

[Rogerborg]

The earliest fossil hunters were all about blowing stuff up then marketing the remains as attractions. Well, what goes around comes around.

This lot have dug up one partial skull fragment, and some grant-hungry mouthwhore is now spouting off "ZOMFG bigger than T-Rex! Look, here it is eating Spinosaurs which we all know from Jurassic Park ate T-Rexes! Totes true, bro! Plus, it's called... uh... ChuckNorrorsaurus. Or whatever the kids are into these days. Really, we don't give a damn."

Pretty sad and

40 feet *long*, not 40 feet tall

[Colin Douglas Howell]

The story says it was estimated to be 40 feet *long*. 40 feet *tall* would have been mind-boggling huge for a predatory dinosaur. Only the very largest of dinosaurs, all plant-eating sauropods, reached such heights.

Peter Jackson is mai waifu

[partyguerrilla]

which included the eerie looking eye socket which resembles the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies.

Tolkien reportedly spinning in his grave at the moment.

Re:

[Woldry]

As if he weren't already, over dwarf-tossing jokes and blond Legolas.