Re: Sick of all the Crap on the DML

["Stephen V. Cole" <adbinc@arn.net>]

I for one learn a lot from watching dino scientists comment on silly 
movies. always pick up a new fact or two, more by accident than 
anything else, but always a good read.

Commercial fossils are a hot topic. Scientists hate the whole idea 
since the contesxt is often lost and the specimen sometimes is. (And, 
ok, a few scientists are just greedy bastards who want every fossil 
in their own locked cabinet, and preferably for free. We all heard 
the story of the guy in Oklahoma who somehow tricked the state 
legislature into giving him ownership of every fossil.)  Most, 
however, just don't want the loss to science. And it is a crying 
shame that there are zillions of fossils in museum storage rooms 
nobody had the time or money to prepare. As a fun hypothetical 
question, I once asked a dino scientist "If I won the lottery and 
offered to fund an expedition, where would we go?" and his response 
was that he'd rather use the money to pay fossil preparation 
technicians than to go dig up something new.

I have got a few dino teeth and a square foot or two of coelophysis 
trackway. None of them scientifically significant, but I have no idea 
where they were found, what location, depth, for mation, or whatever. 
The local museum guy knows me, and ha s a file folder with photos of 
my collection. He's never come around asking to measure the 
Albertosaurus tooth, but hey, if he does, he can.

Part of the problem with such commercial fossils is that something 
truly new might be in a private collection and lost to science and 
science would never have that piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Part of the 
problem is that we don't always know what we think we do. There is a 
theory (I seem to recall) that there are two kinds of T-rexes, but 
until we find another 20 or 30 skulls and can line them all up and 
measure them, we won't know for sure. I guess, in theory, if there 
are 20 or 30 T-rex skulls unknown to science, they might solve the 
question.