New Beetle Species Named After 'Game Of Thrones' Dragons

It's officially 2019 which means we're getting extremely close to the long-awaited eighth and final season of Game of Thrones.

There's no shortage of love for the HBO series and that extends to the wide world of entomology, the branch of zoology concerned with the study of insects. According to NBC News, a Nebraska entomologist has named three new beetles after everyone's favorite dragons.

Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion are best known as the dragons belonging to Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), but now they're also the inspiration behind drogoni, rhaegali and viserioni, the new scarab beetle species discovered by Brett Ratcliffe, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

While Radcliffe is a fan of Game of Thrones, he chose the names "to draw attention to biodiversity and the amount of undiscovered species." Clearly, it's working, because here we are writing about beetles on our comic book website!

"When you create names like these, you do it to gain a little bit of notoriety and bring public attention to it," Ratcliffe explained. "We're still discovering life on Earth. One of every four living things on Earth is a beetle. We haven't discovered them all. We're not even close."

Excuse us while we mull over the fact that ONE OF EVERY FOUR living things on Earth is a beetle. WHAT?! Insane.

The entomologist explained the rules of naming new species to NBC, saying that "rules recommend against using humor or insults, and are particularly useful to avoid having duplicate names." Radcliffe decided a pop culture reference would be "fun" and he went with it because he didn't want to take the naming process "too seriously." He has actually named hundreds of species over the course of his career, so it's no surprise he'd want to keep it interesting.

According to the article, all three beetles have orange features. Drogoni and viserioni are native to Colombia and Ecuador whereas rhaegali can be found in the French Guiana. Hopefully, there's no danger of the viserioni beetle dying and coming back as a terrifying ice zombie to terrorize South America.

Game of Thrones has more than just the entomologists of world excited! HBO reminded fans that the show is coming back, which set Twitter into a frenzy, demanding a new trailer. The last season will only have six episodes, but they're all expected to be more than an hour long.

Game of Thrones returns to HBO in April, 2019.