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| Image: HBO |
Earlier this year, we learned that the name “Arya” was the fastest-rising name for female babies in 2012, and now characters from the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin — and its HBO adaptation — have extended their reach into a new sphere entirely: sea slugs.
As described in a recent paper by Felipe de Vasconcelos Silva, Victor Manuel De Azevedoa and Helena Matthews-Cascona for The Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, a new sea slug in the family Tritoniidae was recently discovered off the northeastern coast of Brazil. It was named Tritonia khaleesi after researchers wisely saw a resemblance between the pale plumes of the slug and the blond, braided hairstyle of a certain Game of Thrones character: Daenerys of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Lady Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, and of course, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea.
de Vasconcelos Silva told the Brazilian website Papelpop that the slug was particularly reminiscent of the Khaleesi’s hair “in the last episode of the first season of the show.”
According to the paper, “internally, T. khaleesi sp. nov. is distinguished from other tritoniids by jaws with 10–14 rows of denticles on the inner lips, absence of stomach plates and the radular formula 32 × 2–5.1.1.1.2–5 teeth.” It is known. (wired)
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