Meshuggah drummer Tomas Haake and Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice are the latest rock and metal musicians to have fossils named after them. The duo have been immortalized as Ophiopetagno Paicei and Muldaster Haakei, both fossils of extinct brittle stars. Dr. Ben Thuy from the Natural History Museum Luxembourg (and lead author of the study) said he and his team of researchers chose Haake and Paice, as their bands helped them get through the analysis of the fossils.
"Analyzing fossils the size of a dust grain and delving deeply into complex evolutionary patterns can be mind-wrecking," said Thuy. "The music of Deep Purple and Meshuggah really helped us blow off steam, renew inspiration and calm our minds."
"Ian Paice of Deep Purple and Meshuggah's Tomas Haake are two of the most prolific and influential drummers of all time," added Prof. Mats E. Eriksson of Lund University, co-author of the study.
Thuy also points out that he himself is a metal drummer in the Luxembourg-based metal band Sleepers' Guilt, so naming the fossils after drummers was only natural. You can read the full study, titled Miniaturization during a Silurian environmental crisis generated the modern brittle star body plan and published in Communications Biology, here.
