A newly discovered raccoon-sized armored monstersaurian lizard from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah has been named for the goblin prince from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, ‘Bolg amondol’
Dr. Hank Woolley from the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Utah discovered the remains inside a jar of bones labeled ‘lizard’. The new species was identified from an associated skeleton of fragmentary bones, tiny pieces of the skull, vertebrae, girdles, limbs, and the bony armor called osteoderms. Woolley was keen on an appropriate name for what turned out to be a new species of monstersaur.
“Bolg is a great sounding name. It’s a goblin prince from The Hobbit, and I think of these lizards as goblin-like, especially looking at their skulls,” said Woolley. He used the fictional language Sindarin created by Tolkien for his elves to craft the species epithet. ‘Amon’ means ‘mound, and ‘dol’ means ‘head’ in the Elvish language, a reference to the mound-like deposits found on Bolg’s and other monstersaur skulls.
Bolg, son of Azog, led the goblin/orc army in the Battle of Five Armies as recounted in the final chapters of The Hobbit. He was killed by Beorn. Bolg also appears in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit movie trilogy.