Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/19/snot_flower/
Boffins hook bone-eating snot flower
Dines on dead minke whales, apparently
Posted in Bootnotes, 19th October 2005 10:02 GMT
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Scientists from London's Natural History Museum and Göteborg University have pulled off a bit of a coup in discovering a previously-unknown species of worm feeding on a dead minke whale bones.
The 1-2cm creature, boasting "frond-like tentacles" was found devouring a minke skeleton off the Swedish coast at a depth of 120m, the Times reports, adding little except to note that it has been named Osedax mucofloris - or "bone-eating snot flower" to its mates.
Not the most attractive of scientific monikers, it must be said, but not as silly [1] as Cummingtonite (a mineral made up of magnesium iron silicate hydroxide and named after Cummington, Massachusetts where it was first discovered) or Arsole - the the arsenic equivalent of pyrrole. ®
Bootnote
There's more on the bone-eating snot flower down at the BBC [2].