Here's some news for 'Lord of the Rings' fans! A new type of butterflies has been named Saurona, after the famous villain Sauron from JRR Tolkien's epic fantasy 'Lord of the Rings'.
The reason: The butterfly has distinct black rings on orange wings which looks similar to Sauron's all-seeing eye, as described in Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings'. And so, Dr Blanca Heurtas, butterfly curator at the Natural History Museum in London, chose to name these new butterflies after Sauron from the bestselling books. She hopes that their unusual name will draw people attention to them and also help in generating more research around the new species.
Two new species of butterfly, namely-- Saurona triangular and Saurona aurigera-- are added to the Saurona genus of butterflies. But it is believed that there would be many more butterflies in this genus.
Dr Blanca Heurtas 'is part of an international team who described the new genus in a paper published in the scientific journal Systematic Entomology. A group of 30 scientists from around the world have spent a decade studying the butterfly subtribe Euptychiina. The experts analysed more than 400 different species of butterfly, and used advances in DNA to identify the differences between them at a genetic level, as well as by their appearance,' reported the BBC.
This is not the first time that newly discovered things are named after characters from the 'Lord of the Rings'. Previously, Sauron had also inspired that name of a a frog, two asteroids were named 2991 Bilbo and 2675 Tolkien, and more.
