It’s Official: Doors Singer Jim Morrison Is Truly the Lizard King

: by Darryl Fears; on June 04, 2013

The cast of a fossil piece, right, is part of the jawbone of the lizard and is only about a quarter of the entire jawbone. The lizard, which roamed the earth 40 million years ago, was the size of a German Shepherd. (Craig Chandler/Office of University Communications)

Jim Morrison was a king of sorts, at least in his own mind. The lead singer of the Doors sang in one cover song that he was “a king bee.” In another, he said, “I’m the crawlin’ king snake.”

But Morrison most famously wrote in a poem that he was “the Lizard King,” a name that stuck. So naturally, when a paleontologist who happens to be a Doors fan came across the fossil of a giant lizard, one of the largest ever to trod the planet, he named it Barbaturex morrisoni, after the enigmatic singer of the Doors.

“I’ve been a Doors fan since college,” said Jason Head, an assistant professor in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Head had read Morrison’s poem “Celebration of the Lizard,” the basis of the Doors’ “Not to Touch the Earth,” which ended with the line about his being the Lizard King.