UA Scientists Name Ancient Species Of Crab After Nick Saban

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A dime-sized fossilized crab pulled from a Lowndes County roadcut has been named after legendary Alabama football coach Nick Saban.

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University of Alabama researchers and collaborators on Thursday described Costacopluma nicksabani, a newly identified species from a rich cache of crab and shrimp fossils that documents how marine life rebounded after the dinosaur-killing asteroid strike 66 million years ago.

The study was published Sept. 22 in "Geodiversitas."

The Saban crab is the most common species in the collection from central Alabama, where nearly all finds are single shells, or carapaces, roughly the size of a dime. The animals lived on or in muddy seafloors and belong to Retroplumidae, a crab family that still has living representatives. \

Researchers say the site yielded eight species of decapod crustaceans — including strong and a new burrowing shrimp — making it among the most diverse North American assemblages discovered so soon after the mass extinction. Most of the fossils are curated by UA Museums and can be seen on a collections tour by request.

Beyond the nickname, the species comes with precise coordinates in the rock record: the Pine Barren Member of the Clayton Formation (early Paleocene, Danian) at the Mussel Creek roadcut in Lowndes County. The published description lists Alabama Museum of Natural History specimens as the type material for the new species.

The paper’s authors — led by UA paleontologist Adiël A. Klompmaker with P. George Martin, Matúš Hyžný, Andrew R. Bowman, George E. Phillips and Roger W. Portell — argue the trove helps fill a key gap in understanding which crab lineages survived and diversified after the end-Cretaceous catastrophe.

UA’s announcement notes the genus Costacopluma spans roughly 48–87 million years in the fossil record, while its broader family persists in the present.

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