They were headhunters looking for skulls, because they were flashier."Īnd Barnum Brown was among the best - the Indiana Jones of dino hunters.
They were looking for specimens they could mount in museums. "When people went out looking for dinosaurs, they were trophy hunters. "It was literally the Wild West at that time," says Witmer. Larry Witmer, paleontologist at Ohio University, says scientists clamored for bones and more bones. In the early 1900s, dinosaur bones were like Egyptian mummies - mysteries that dazzled both the public and scientists. The bone came out of a Montana hillside over 100 years ago, discovered by a man who was a legend among fossil hunters. Science Expedition Notes: In The Field With Fossil Hunter Barnum Brown "I didn't want to be the jackass that lost it," he says. It belonged to one of the world's most important skeletons, one that was discovered a century ago in a Montana hillside.Īnd carrying it around made Mehling nervous.
The monkey was actually a bone - a very valuable bone. "A big monkey with short arms and two claws." "Every moment of every day I had this monkey on my back," he says with a laugh. When he went to the last meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Pittsburgh, he was planning for a good time - first lectures, then party. This is a story of one of those objects - a special bone that's part of a special skeleton. You might call them Lost Treasures of Science. The backrooms of museums are like your grandparents' attic, only the stuff is more exotic - things like fossilized jellyfish, dinosaur eggs or mummified princes.Īnd if you look carefully, you'll find objects that once changed science but are now largely forgotten.
0 kommentar(er)
