Masiakasaurus knopfleri is a newly discovered dinosaur found in north-western Madagascar and it has been named after Mark Knopfler, the lead singer of Dire Straits, the great stadium-filling band of the 1980s.
It was about a metre and a half tall, two metres long, and had unusual, forward-pointing teeth. And it probably ate anything it could lay its claws on.
Masiakasaurus knopfleri is a newly discovered dinosaur found in north-western Madagascar and it has been named after Mark Knopfler, the lead singer of Dire Straits, the great stadium-filling band of the 1980s.
Scott Sampson of the University of Utah and his team say they decided to honour the singer because he seemed to inspire them as they dug for fossils on the island.
"Whenever we played Knopfler's music, we tended to find more fossils of this little, new creature," Sampson told BBC News Online. "It became our running joke: if we didn't play it, we wouldn't find the fossils, and if we did play it, we would."
Details of the dinosaur are published in the scientific journal Nature.
Knopfler delighted
Mark Knopfler said on Wednesday that he was "delighted and honoured" to hear of the fast-moving, versatile and vicious creature bearing his name.
M. knopfleri could provide clues to the geological history of the Southern Hemisphere.
The creature belonged to a very enigmatic and poorly known group of carnivorous dinosaurs, or theropods, called the Abelisauridae and lived towards the end of the Late Cretaceous period, between 71.3 and 65 million years ago.
CD collection
"They are only known from India, Madagascar and Argentina, and this has led us to argue that perhaps some of these land masses kept connections a lot longer than people previously thought," Sampson said.
"They might have been moving back and forth between Madagascar and South America through Antarctica."
Sampson's team will be heading back to Madagascar with their CD collection soon.
"One of the nice things about working somewhere like Madagascar is that a good proportion of whatever we find is brand new to science.
"Many people think that we know most of what there is to know about dinosaurs, and that is very far from the truth. We're just beginning to learn about these animals," he said.
Famous names
The new dinosaur joins a long list of animals, plants and even chemicals whose names reflect the whims or interests of their discoverers. The rock star Sting has a tree frog named in his honour: Hyla stingi.
The famous human-like fossil specimen (Australopithecus afarensis) discovered in Hadar in Ethiopia in 1974 was dubbed Lucy after the Beatles' classic song Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.
Some names are positively silly: a beetle has been called Aha Ha, and a fly, whose discoverers said it was very difficult to see, has been named Dissup irae.
There is an ongoing debate in the scientific world over whether names should be allowed if they are not sufficiently dignified.
And in many research areas there are very strict taxonomic rules regulating the assigning of scientific names. Even so, it is still possible to have a bit of fun.
Image of Dicrotendipes thanatogratus is courtesy of J.H.Epler