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New Dinosaur Named After the Eye of Sauron
SchrodingerZ writes "95 million years ago, the dinosaur Sauroniops pachytholus roamed northern Africa. Fossils, originally found in southern Morocco, only consisted of the upper skull, which included the eerie looking eye socket which resembles the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies. Using skull comparison, it is theorized the two-legged meat-eater would have been 40 feet tall, challenging the Tyrannosaurus Rex in height. More fossils are needed for a full analysis, but so far it is very clear this dinosaur towered over many."
the eerie looking eye socket which resembles the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies
Nowhere in the article did they say that. In fact, if you watch this Slate video there's not much physically related between the extrapolated skeleton and the film adaptation of the Eye of Sauron -- however they did name the dinosaur after that deity/character. The reason they named it after Sauron is that all we know of this predator now is its eye (really just a piece of the socket) and the idea of a large predator being known only for its eye reminded the archeologists of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings.
I think the submitter was confused by the hyperlink in the article that was designed to generate more page clicks for NatGeo:
"The idea of a predator that is physically known only as its fierce eye reminded me of Sauron, in particular as depicted in Peter Jackson's movies," Cau explained. (See a picture of an alien planet that resembles the Eye of Sauron.)
(emphasis mine)
My work here is dung.
No, he wasn't. "Sauron" has a meaning in Tolkien's invented language Quenya, namely "foul". Tolkien was likely inspired in this by Old Norse saur "urine, filth". See Tolkien's etymologies in The Lost Road . In a letter to one Mr. Rang, Tolkien explicity disavowed any connection to the Greek word for "lizard" (and in fact the Proto-Elvish form didn't even have an initial s-).