Music

Bad Religion singer Greg Graffin has a prehistoric bird fossil named after him

by Nicole Villeneuve

Greg Graffin is not only the singer of hugely influential punk band Bad Religion, he’s also an academic and an author—he holds a PhD in zoology from Cornell University and has served as a lecturer in life sciences and paleontology at UCLA, and recently he published a science-based memoir, Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science and Bad Religion in a World Without God. Also, he has just had a bird fossil named after him(!).

Graffin’s label Epitaph announced yesterday: In this month’s Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society in London, paleontologists including Dr. Jingmai O’Connor, have discovered an ancient bird fossil in the Gansu Province of north-western China, and have named this important find “Qiliania graffini.” “The species name is in honor of Dr. Gregory Graffin, PhD: paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, professor, rock star, and inspiration to numerous budding and established scientists around the world,” says Dr. O’Connor.

Graffin is thrilled, and says his “love of birds now must pass to the Cretaceous and the wonderful finds from China that [the authors] are elucidating.”

That sounds like something a PhD punk would say, we think.