Laelaps

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The name Laelaps is a name attributed to the following:

• Laelaps was a Greek mythological dog who never failed to catch what he was hunting.

• The name Laelaps was also given a genus of theropod dinosaur discovered in the marl pits of New Jersey (Navesink Formation, early Maastrichtian). Described by American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope in 1866, after the mythological dog, the binomen Laelaps aquilunguis was changed to Dryptosaurus aquilunguis 11 years later by Cope's rival, Othniel Charles Marsh, when he learned that the name Laelaps had already been used (see below).

• Laelaps is a genus of mites which are ectoparasites of rodents. The most familiar species is the spiny rat mite Laelaps echidninus, because it is a common parasite of fancy rats.