Dire Straits Frontman Is Ancient

By Caitlin O'toole

Tuesday September 30, 1997 12:00 AM EDT

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Former Dire Straits singer and guitarist Mark Knopfler, 51, has received a very unique honor: paleontologists have named a 70-million-year-old dinosaur after him, according to Reuters. Dr. Scott Sampson at the University of Utah and scientists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook discovered the remains of several 6-foot-long meat-eating creatures while they were in Madagascar listening to music by the Grammy Award-winning rock band. So they named the new species Masiakasaurus knopfleri. "We decided what better way to honor Knopfler than to name a dinosaur after him. If it weren't for his music we might not have found the animal in the first place," Sampson said. Sampson and his colleagues are said to be heading back to Madagascar this summer to do some more digging. They say they'll still be listening to Dire Straits.