Cower in fear, for the end of the world is nigh: the unnameable has been named!

Behold, mortals, the nameless dweller in the accurst city named “The Nameless City.”

Well, actually he’s from New Mexico.

And from Columbia University:

Two Columbia scientists have discovered the fossil of a toothless crocodile relative that looks like a six-foot-long, two-legged dinosaur, but is actually a distant cousin of today’s alligators and crocodiles. Adjunct professor of earth and environmental sciences Mark Norell and his graduate student Sterling Nesbitt, both of whom also work as paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History, have named the fossil Effigia okeeffeae.

Effigia means “ghost,” referring to the decades that the fossil remained hidden from science [and also the fact that it was found on the Ghost Ranch Dig; like, synchronicity, dude]. The species name, okeeffeae, honors the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived near the site in northern New Mexico where the fossil was found.

According to Wikipedia, the fossil was discovered back in 1947-1948 by Edwin H. Colbert, but was lying unclassified in the basement of the American Museum of Natural History when Norell and Nesbitt were looking for something else and the one of them went, “I say, that’s odd. Never seen anything like it. What do you say, old chap?” or something like that, and the other fellow said,

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons death may die.

I should have known that the Arabs other department heads had good reason for shunning the nameless city fossil, the city fossil told of in strange tales but seen by no living man, yet I defied them and went into the untrodden desert basement with my camel grad student. I alone have seen it, and that is why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear as mine; why no other man shivers so horribly when the night wind air conditioning rattles the windows specimen cases. When I came upon it in the ghastly stillness of unending sleep it looked at me, chilly from the rays of a cold moon the fluorescents amidst the desert’s New York’s heat. And as I returned its look I forgot my triumph at finding it, and stopped still with my camel grad student to wait for the dawn.

Or words to that effect.

(nb Cthulhu references get the squid tag. Makes total sense, right? Aw, shut up)