''Han'' is a monotypic genus of

agnostid Agnostidae is a family of Agnostida trilobites. Like all Agnostina, they were eyeless and bore only two thoracic segments. They ranged in benthic waters across the globe from 508 to 461 million years ago, containing the following genera, among o ...

trilobite Trilobites (; meaning "three lobes") are extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest-known groups of arthropods. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the At ...

, whose sole member is ''Han solo''. The type specimen of ''H. solo'' was found in marine strata of the Arenig to Llanvirn-aged

Zitai Formation The Zitai or Zhitai Formation ...

of Middle Ordovician southern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, and is named after the

character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

in ''

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop-culture Cultural impact of S ...

''.

Taxonomy

This taxon was erected in 2005, based upon fossil material found in beds of lower

Zitai Formation The Zitai or Zhitai Formation ...

exposed in Maocaopu, Reshi, Taoyuan County, Hunan, Taoyuan County in north Hunan,

. Fossil material include a cephalon (trilobite anatomy), cephalon and two pygidium, pygidia. It was found to belong to family Diplagnostidae, subfamily Pseudagnostinae; it was originally thought to be most closely related to the genus ''Pseudorhaptagnostus'', but it differed substantially from that genus in both some important diagnostic characters, and in the age of the beds in it was deposited, so a new genus was erected.

Etymology

According to the original publication, the generic name ''Han'' is a reference to the Han Chinese, the largest ethnic group in China; and the specific epithet ''solo'' refers to the fact that the species is the youngest Diplagnostidae fossil found to that date, suggesting that it was the last surviving member of that family. However, Samuel Turvey has stated elsewhere that he named it after Han Solo because some friends dared him to name a species after a ''

'' character. This is not the only unusual scientific name erected by Turvey; in the same paper he named a new species of ''Geragnostus'' ''Geragnostus waldorfstatleri, G. waldorfstatleri'', because of "the resemblance of the pygidial axis to the heads of Waldorf and Statler, two characters from ''The Muppet Show''."

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1087445 Agnostida genera Agnostoidea Fossil taxa described in 2005 Monotypic arthropod genera Ordovician trilobites Star Wars Humour in science

Taxonomy

Etymology

See also

References