[CPProt.net] Wyoming: Museum draws flak over display. Critics fear private facility can't properly care for rare fossil

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Museum draws flak over display
Critics fear private facility can't properly care for rare fossil

By Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News
December 2, 2005

Photo:
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4282668,00.ht
ml

A plan to display one of the world's best-preserved specimens of
Archaeopteryx - the earliest known birdlike animal - in a small, privately
owned Wyoming museum is drawing fire from paleontologists. 

Some critics say the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis lacks an
adequate security system as well as the skilled workers needed to properly
care for the precious 150 million-year-old fossil. 

Others say there's no guarantee that the nearly complete skeleton will be
preserved for posterity or be available for future study. 

"There's nothing preventing it from being sold again in the future and then
being removed from the scientific arena," said Mark Goodwin, assistant
director of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California,
Berkeley. 

"In the eyes of professional paleontologists, it's not a proper repository,"
Goodwin said. 

Only 10 of the feathered Archaeopteryx (ark-ee-op-tur-ix) specimens have
been found. The Thermopolis fossil comes from limestone deposits in Bavaria,
Germany. 

The magpie-size skeleton is described in today's edition of the journal
Science. Features in its skull and feet add new evidence to the widely held
idea that birds descended from carnivorous dinosaurs. 

The study's three authors include Burkhard Pohl, a former veterinarian who
founded the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in 1995. The center's 12,000-square-foot
exhibition area has more than 200 displays, including about two dozen
full-size mounted dinosaur skeletons. 

Pohl brokered the deal that will bring the prized fossil to Thermopolis in a
few months. 

The widow of a Swedish collector found the fossil after her husband died in
the late 1970s, Pohl said Thursday in an e-mail message. Pohl located a
donor willing to buy the limestone slab and put it on permanent display in
Thermopolis. 

Pohl said Goodwin's concerns about the fossil's future are misplaced because
the sale agreement includes a guarantee that the Archaeopteryx will remain
in a museum forever. 

"In the event that the Wyoming Dinosaur Center should cease to exist, it is
agreed that the specimen will be placed in another public collection," Pohl
wrote. 

It took more than a year to seal the deal, and the new owner wishes to
remain anonymous, said Scott Hartman, the center's science director. 

The Wyoming Dinosaur Center is not revealing the selling price, but a
less-impressive Archaeopteryx fossil sold for $1.3 million in 1999,
according to Science. 

Ken Carpenter, a paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science,
said he knows Pohl and has visited the Thermopolis center. 

"The people in Thermopolis basically are gobbling it up because it gives
tourists another reason to come to Thermopolis," Carpenter said of the
center. The north-central Wyoming town, population 3,200, is best known for
its hot springs. 

"I guess my only concern with the specimen going to Thermopolis is that the
security is not all that great," Carpenter said. "And the chances of it
being stolen, I think, are very high." 

Hartman said the center plans to "completely overhaul" its security system
before the Archaeopteryx goes on display. 

"There are valid concerns that need to be addressed," he said. "We're going
to do our best to address these concerns, and I hope our colleagues will see
that." 

Berkeley's Goodwin, for one, remains skeptical. 

"There's a community of people who ride the coattails of paleontology for
profit," he said. "And that definitely applies to Pohl."

http://rockymountainnews.com/