"The Burke's Bare Bones"

[MKIRKALDY@aol.com]

The Burke Museum's collection and curator are under  investigation:

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0546/051116_news_burke.php
____
 
The Burke's Bare Bones
Uncertain documentation prompts an investigation  of the fossil collection at 
the University of Washington's natural-history  museum.
 
by Roger Downey

For more than three years, the official museum of the state of  Washington 
has been refusing to answer questions about the source, nature, and  legality 
of 
many items in its collection of more than 42,000 fossils, ranging in  size 
from field mouse to whale. Last week, at long last, the University of  
Washington administration moved quietly but decisively to blow the murk away  
from the 
Burke Museum. Fossil experts from three institutions in Western America  were 
invited to Seattle to look over the Burke's collections and report whether  
the objects in question appeared to be what they were labeled to be, from the  
areas they are claimed to be from, and, properly labeled or not, whether they  
were collected legally in the first place.
 
These are not questions often addressed to scientific institutions  supported 
by tax dollars. But as Seattle Weekly disclosed two years ago (see  "Another 
UW Skeleton," April 2, 2003), scientists with Montana's Museum of the  Rockies 
and the Bureau of Land Management were openly airing suspicion that the  
Burke's curator of vertebrate paleontology, John M. Rensberger, had collected  
specimens from terrain under their mandate without getting the necessary 
federal  
permit. When they began to look into the matter, UW administrators discovered 
 that the problem went deeper. Not only were there specimens in the 
collection  for which paperwork was missing, many others lacked even an 
indication of 
where  and when they were collected, and still others were labeled as coming 
from  places where it seemed impossible that they could have been found.
 
<SNIP of lots of interesting text>
____
 
The 2003 article is at:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0314/news-downey.php
 
Mary