RE: How is withholding access to published specimens ethical?

[Brad McFeeters <archosauromorph2@hotmail.com>]

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> Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 15:37:03 -0700
> From: mickey_mortimer111@msn.com
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: RE: How is withholding access to published specimens ethical?
>
> Well, I don't think Perez-Moreno is the one being evil.  The specimen's not 
> his to speak for any longer, and I don't think he forbade anyone from 
> distributing his thesis.  It's not like Charig, who banned anyone from 
> distributing his thesis, even after his death.  So to this day, you have to 
> visit London and write notes if you want to know about archosauriforms 
> described in the 1950s.
>

Are you implying Charig was evil?  Even with Charig's unpublished work being 
undistributable, it is apparently possible to access and publish on his 
material (Butler et al. 2009 on *Hypselorhachis*), so I don't know why so many 
of the specimens remain totally unpublished.

I wonder which taxon has spent the *shortest* time in limbo after being 
abandoned by the person originally working on it?  Chabli named "Gravisaurus" 
in a thesis in 1988, and Taquet & Russell formally published it as 
*Lurdusaurus* in 1999, a fairly brief span compared to everything else we've 
discussed.