Kermit the Frog immortalized by an ancient amphibian fossil

A fossil discovered in Texas four decades ago has sat unexamined in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, until now. The 270-million (ish) year-old amphibian fossil has finally been described and named Kermitops gratus, after beloved Muppet, Kermit the Frog.

“Using the name Kermit has significant implications for how we can bridge the science that is done by paleontologists in museums to the general public,” Calvin So, a George Washington University paleontologist, says in a GWU press release. “Because this animal is a distant relative of today’s amphibians, and Kermit is a modern-day amphibian icon, it was the perfect name for it.”

The fossilized skull — just over an inch long and with big oval eye sockets — was unearthed in 1984 in rock outcrops in north central Texas known as the Red Beds. The late paleontologist Nicholas Hotton III and his team collected so many fossils they they were not able to study all of them in detail, and a number of them ended up in the Smithsonian’s National Fossil Collection, where it remained unidentified until now.

This isn’t the first time Kermit has been enshrined in the fossil record. Another frog fossil described in 2015 is dubbed Hensonbatrachus kermiti, honoring both Kermit and his creator, the late Jim Henson, who also has a sea slug bearing his name, Olea hensoni.

Kermit is not the only Muppet to be honored by scientists. Garbage-can resident Oscar the Grouch is named for a miniature orchid, Stelis oscargrouchii, whose fuzz is reminiscent of Oscar’s unruly mop. Even the curmudgeonly hecklers Statler and Waldorf have their own species namesake – Geragnostus waldorfstatleri – a trilobite fossil.

Miss Piggy is yet to be immortalized in the taxonomic record. But hope springs eternal.

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Manuela V. Hoelterhoff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and editor whose wide range of topics includes politics, art, architecture, books, conservation, music, animals, and travel. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, Hoelterhoff is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She resides in Gardiner, New York, where she has a small farm devoted to rescued pigs and goats, and her website is at www.manuelahoelterhoff.com