Assumptions of authority: the story of Sue the T-rex and controversy over access to fossils
Tóm tắt
Although the buying, selling, and trading of fossils has been a principle part of paleontological practice over the centuries, the commercial collection of fossils today has re-emerged into a pervasive and lucrative industry. In the United States, the number of commercial companies driving the legal, and sometimes illegal, selling of fossils is estimated to have doubled since the 1980s, and worries from academic paleontologists over this issue has increased accordingly. Indeed, some view the commercialization of fossils as one of the greatest threats to paleontology today. In this article, I address the story of “Sue”—the largest, most complete, and most expensive Tyrannosaurus rex ever excavated—whose discovery incited a series of high-profile legal battles throughout the 1990s over the question of “Who owns Sue?” Over the course of a decade, various stakeholders from academic paleontologists and fossil dealers to Native Americans, private citizens, and government officials all laid claim to Sue. In exploring this case, I argue that assumptions of authority are responsible for initiating and sustaining debates over fossil access. Here, assumptions of authority are understood as assumptions of ownership, or expertise, or in some cases both. Viewing the story from this perspective illuminates the significance of fossils as boundary objects. It also highlights the process of boundary-work by which individuals and groups constructed or deconstructed borders around Sue (specifically) and fossil access (more generally) to establish their own authority. I draw on science studies scholarship as well as literature in the professionalization, commercialization, and valuation of science to examine how assumptions of authority facilitated one of the most divisive episodes in recent paleontological history and the broader debate on the commercial collection of vertebrate fossil material in the United Sates.
Tài liệu tham khảo
Assessment of Fossil Management on Federal & Indian Lands. (2000). Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1–50.
Barrow, M. (1998). A passion for birds: American ornithology after Audubon. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Barrow, M. (2000). The specimen dealer: Entrepreneurial natural history in America’s Gilded age. Journal of the History of Biology,33(3), 493–534.
Brinkman, P. D. (2010). The second Jurassic dinosaur rush: Museums and paleontology in America at the turn of the twentieth century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Browne, M. W. (1992). F.B.I. Seizes tyrannosaur in fight on fossil custody. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/19/us/fbi-seizes-tyrannosaur-in-fight-on-fossil-custody.html.
Browne, M. W. (1996). Fossil dealer, target of federal prosecutors, Begins jail term. The New York Times, February 22, 1996.
Browne, M. W. (1997). Tyrannosaur skeleton is sold to a museum for $8.36 million. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/05/nyregion/tyrannosaur-skeleton-is-sold-to-a-museum-for-8.36-million.html.
Collins, H. (2004). Gravity’s shadow: The search for gravitational waves. Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press.
Collins, H. (2010). Gravity’s ghost: Scientific discovery in the twenty-first century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Collins, H., Evans, R., & Gorman, M. (2007). Trading zones and interactional expertise. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A,38, 657–666. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2007.09.003.
Dalton, R. (2001). US lays out bare bones of fossil protection package. Nature,413(6856), 555. https://doi.org/10.1038/35098213.
Duffy, P., & Lofgren, L. (1994). Jurassic farce: A critical analysis of the government’s seizure of ‘Sue’, a sixty-five-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil. South Dakota Law Review from the School of Law at University of South Dakota, 39(3), 478.
Emling, S. (2011). The fossil hunter: Dinosaurs, evolution, and the woman whose discoveries changed the world. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fiffer, S. (2000). Tyrannosaurus Sue: The extraordinary saga of the largest, most fought over T. Rex ever found. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.
Fossils Protected in US Land Legislation. (2009). Nature, 458, 562. https://doi.org/10.1038/458562e.
Fourcade, M. (2011). Cents and sensibility: Economic valuation and the nature of ‘nature’. American Journal of Sociology,116(6), 1721–1777.
Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review,48(6), 781–795.
Gieryn, T. F. (1999). Cultural boundaries of science: Credibility on the line. Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press.
Hilgartner, S. (2017). Reordering life: Knowledge and control in the genomics revolution. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Jaffe, M. (2001). The gilded dinosaur: The fossil war between E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh and the rise of American science. Victoria: Crown Publications.
Keeney, E. B. (1992). The botanizers: Amateur scientists in nineteenth-century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Lane, N. G. (1989). Paleontology: The academy and the marketplace. Journal of Paleontology,63(3), 259–260.
Larson, N. L., Stein, W. Triebold, M. & Winters, G. (2017). What commercial fossil dealers contribute to the science of paleontology. The Journal of Paleontological Sciences, (11). http://www.aaps-journal.org/pdf/contibutions-to-paleontology.pdf.
Larson, P., & Donnan, K. (2002). Rex appeal: The amazing story of Sue, the dinosaur that changed science, the law, and my life. Montpelier: Invisible Cities Press.
Larson, P., & Russell, D. (2014). The benefits of commercial fossil sales to 21st-century paleontology. Palaeontologia Electronica,17(1), 1–7.
Lavine, G. (2005). Fossil thief put officials between a rock and a hard place. The Salt Lake Tribune. May 5, 2005. https://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/utah/ci_2709375.
Liston, J. (2016). ‘Fossillegal’: A symposium on ethics in palaeontology. European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists Newsletter, 93, 27–30.
Lucier, P. (2009). The professional and the scientist in nineteenth-century America. Isis,100(4), 699–732.
Malmsheimer, R. W., & Hilfinger, A. S. H. (2003). In search of a paleontological resources policy for federal lands. Natural Resources Journal,43, 587–614.
Miller, T. D. (2014). Dinosaur 13. Documentary. Directed by Todd Douglas Miller.
Mitchell, W. J. T. (1998). The last dinosaur book: The life and times of a cultural icon. Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press.
Morell, V. (1992). Dustup in the bone pile: Academics v. collectors. Science 258 (5081): 391–92. http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/stable/pdf/2879965.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A0ca9a654f42cf135378e76ef1fe11518.
Nieuwland, I. (2019). American dinosaur abroad: A cultural history of Carnegie’s plaster Diplodocus. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Paleontological Resource Preservation Act. (2009) Society for Vertebrate Paleontology. Retrieved October 22, 2018. http://vertpaleo.org/The-Society/Advocacy/Paleontological-Resources-Preservation-Act.aspx.
Pringle, H. (2014). Selling America’s Fossil Record. Science,343(6169), 364–367. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.343.6169.364.
Pringle, H. (2013). Not sold! ‘Dueling Dinos’ flop at auction. Science, November 19, 2013. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/11/not-sold-dueling-dinos-flop-auction.
Rainger, R. (1991). An agenda for antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn and vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, 1890–1935. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.
Raup, D., Black, C., Blakstone, S., Dole, H., Grogan, S., Larson, P., et al. (1987). Paleontological collecting. Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press.
Rea, T. (2004). Bone wars: The excavation and celebrity of Andrew Carnegie’s dinosaur. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Reingold, N. (1979). Definitions and speculations: The professionalization of science in America in the nineteenth century. In A. Oleson & J. Voss (Eds.), The organization of knowledge in modern America in the Nineteenth Century, 1860–1920. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Rieppel, L. (2012). Bringing dinosaurs back to life exhibiting prehistory at the American Museum of Natural History. Isis,103, 460–490.
Rieppel, L. (2015). Prospecting for dinosaurs on the mining frontier: The value of information in America’s Gilded Age. Social Studies of Science,45(2), 161–186.
Rieppel, L. (2018). Hoaxes, humbugs, and frauds: Distinguishing truth from untruth in early America. Journal of the Early Republic,38(3), 501–529.
Rieppel, L. (2019). Assembling the dinosaur: Fossil hunters, tycoons, and the making of a spectacle. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Scott, E. (2005). Is selling vertebrate fossils bad for science? PALAIOS,20(6), 515–517.
Secord, A. (1994). Corresponding interests: Artisans and gentlemen in nineteenth-century natural history. The British Journal for the History of Science,27(4), 383–408.
Secord, A. (2002). Artisan naturalists: Science as popular culture in nineteenth century England. London: University of London.
Shimada, K., Currie, P. Scott, E. & Sumida, S. (2014). The greatest challenge to 21st century paleontology: When commercialization of fossils threatens the science. Palaeontologia Electronica, 17(1), 1–4.
Smocovitis, V. B. (1996). Unifying biology: The evolutionary synthesis and evolutionary biology. New Haven: Princeton University Press.
Star, S. L., & Griesemer, J. R. (1989). Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science,19(3), 387–420.
Switek, B. (2009). Tussling over ‘Tinker’ the Tyrannosaurus. Smithsonian Magazine, August 11, 2009. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/tussling-over-tinker-the-tyrannosaurus-50530023/.
Triebold, M. (2007). Fossils: New journal will oppose illegal trade. Nature,446(7132), 136–136. https://doi.org/10.1038/446136c.
Webster, D. (2009). The dinosaur fossil wars. Smithsonian Magazine. April 2009. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-dinosaur-fossil-wars-116496039/.