Fossil hunters dig in here
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Paleontologists from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Montpellier, France, from left, Anthony Ravel, Rodolphe Tabuce, Anusha Ramdarshan and Laurent Marivaux, take a closer look at a 50-million-year-old Shoshonius cooperi primate skull fossil from Wyoming on Thursday at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Oakland. Scientists from 31 countries are attending the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists starting today at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. -
Perching on top of a 10-foot ladder, Dan Pickering of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History adjusts a sign in the claw of the Tyrannosaurus rex on display at Pittsburgh International Airport. The sign welcomes the members of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists to its 70th annual meeting.
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When an international team of scientists in May 2009 revealed that a 47 million-year-old monkeylike fossil nicknamed Ida could be a "link" in the evolution of humans, the criticism started almost immediately.
The information was disclosed via a splashy presentation in New York City, followed quickly by a TV documentary and a book.
In the 17 months since then, "I think a consensus has emerged that this is a fossil lemur, not related to us," said Christopher Beard, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and one of the fiercest critics of the Ida theory.
But today that team will be at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center for the 70th annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists -- hosted by the Carnegie -- to try again to make its case that some opponents call a last-ditch effort to do so, and generate some rigorous debate in the process.
They will present an updated analysis of the fossil, formally called Darwinius masillae, in a presentation that's expected to be one of the highlights of the five-day conference. Among its 1,200 attendees will be many of the stars of the paleontology world: dinosaur hunters such as Paul Sereno and Jack Horner and evolution specialists such as Dr. Beard and Maeve Leakey.
Presentations at paleontology conferences typically are studious, academic affairs, rarely prone to rhetorical fireworks.
Still, Matthew Lamanna, assistant curator at the Carnegie, said: "It seems one talk every year sets the conference on fire."
Six years ago it was a presentation by Mary Higby Schweitzer, a North Carolina State paleontologist, who described how she had found soft tissue inside a dinosaur bone as she ran a video of herself using tweezers to pull at the tissue, "and you could hear the room gasp," Dr. Lamanna recalled.
Many presentations this year have the potential to break new ground in the field, including new findings about Tyrannosaurus rex, nocturnal dinosaurs, the colors of dinosaurs, implications of historic climate data and a host of new species that will be discussed.
First Published October 10, 2010 12:00 am
