Daisy Morris, who is now nine years old is to have the species named after her as Vectidraco daisymorrisae.
Vertidraco means ‘dragon from the Isle of Wight’ while the rest of the title is named after the young fossil-hunter.
She found the remains of the small pterosaur on the eroding coastline of Atherfield beach on the UK’s Isle of Wight and took it to a local dinosaur expert and paleontologist, Martin Simpson.
In Daisy’s honour, for saving the pterosaur’s remains from being destroyed along with the beach, Simpson named the new species after Daisy.
“When Daisy and her family brought the fossilised remains to me in April 2009, I knew I was looking at something very special. And I was right,” Simpson said.
“The fossil turned out to be a completely new genus and species of small pterosaur… Because of the island’s eroding coastline, would without doubt have been washed away and destroyed if it had not been found by Daisy.”
The pterosaur has since been donated to the Natural History Museum which recently named the Isle of Wight as the ‘dinosaur capital of Great Britain’.
How cool would it be to have a dinosaur named after you? Even if it was only a pterosaur, which do look a bit like the dino-deformed offspring of a drunken bat and a scaly pelican.
Well done little Daisy!
