Has Science Gone Too Far? Researchers Just Named a Fossil After Kermit the Frog (And We Kinda Love It)

It’s not every day that scientists name a new discovery after a Disney character.

Kermit and Miss Piggy ©Disney

Well, let’s back up. We’re talking about the Muppets here (as the characters, not the scientists), who you can say hello to at MuppetVision 3D in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It turns out that Kermit the Frog, one of the most well-known characters from the franchise, has now been used to name a 270 million-year-old fossil.

According to ABC News, scientists unearthed a fossilized skull of an amphibian that they’ve now named Kermitops gratus after its striking resemblance to the one and only Kermit the Frog. While Kermit didn’t live 200+ million years ago, the Kermitops gratus did!

©Smithsonian

It may be a little hard to see the vision at first, but this handy side-by-side comparison shows that Kermit the Frog actually has a lot in common with the old guy! Or…maybe the scientists just really liked Kermit. Who’s to say?

©Smithsonian

The skull is three centimeters long, and its eyelid bones give it a bug-eyed look. Plus, its lopsided smile, caused by the crushing of the fossil, really did remind researchers of Kermit the Frog!

©Smithsonian

The researchers who found the fossil have said that the “Kermitops lived during the prehistoric Permian Period,” which is now Texas, and “belongs to a lineage that is believed to have given rise to frogs, salamanders and their other kin,” per ABC News. To put that into perspective, that’s about 40 million years before the FIRST dinosaurs!