Sure, you can score vintage cars, one-of-a-kind guitar straps, even the odd mass spectrometer on eBay. But now it seems that a place in science history can also be purchased on the popular auction website. So learned entomologist Richard Harrington, vice president of the United Kingdom's Royal Entomological Society, when he recently bought an insect encased in a chunk of pre-historic amber on the site.

As the BBC reported, the insect turned out to be a previously undescribed aphid species that has been extinct for millions of years. Harrington, who is deputy science director at the centre for bioenergy and climate change at agricultural research organization Rothamsted Research, bought the pill-size bead of Balkan amber from a Lithuanian eBay user for 20 British pounds and sent it to renowned fossil aphid expert Ole Heie in Copenhagen.

Heie determined that the insect, a member of the Mindarus genus, was new to science and named the new species Mindarus harringtoni after Harrington.

While ecstatic about his find, Harrington toyed with the idea of giving the new species a more playful name. "I wanted the aphid to be named Mindarus ebayi," he said in a Rothamsted Research statement, "but flippant species names are frowned upon these days! I'm delighted to have a work of nature named after me - even if it is an extinct fossil!"