There are several tributes to legendary head coach Nick Saban on the campus of the University of Alabama. A statue featuring the coach clapping, named the Nick Saban Walk of Champions Statue, was unveiled on the campus in 2011. After Saban’s retirement, the field at Bryant-Denny Stadium was named Saban Field in his honor.
Now he has something else named in his honor by University of Alabama researchers.
A crab.
A team led by University of Alabama researchers have discovered several ancient crab and shrimp fossils from central Alabama, and the have named the most common fossil Costacopluma nicksabani.
Or the Saban Crab, for short.
According to the school:
“While the dinosaurs disappeared about 66 million years ago after a giant meteorite hit Earth, crabs like these survived and kept thriving. The Saban crab’s relatives have been around for a long time, about 48-87 million years. And yes, some members of its family are still alive today.
“The fossil site is a big deal because scientists found eight different species of crabs and shrimps there, including another brand-new crab and a new type of burrowing shrimp. This is the most diverse group of these creatures ever found at one spot in North America so soon after the big extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs.”
You can read the full scientific paper in the journal Geodiversitas.
No word on whether those crabs have played anybody, however.