The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his065/arch_6.arj/ARCH-6.TXT

Text File | 1991-01-12 | 10KB | 216 lines

Dickson,  David.   "Feathers  Still Fly in Row over
Fossil  Bird"  Science  238:  475-476,  23  October
1987.

Scientists  at  Britain's  Natural  History  Museum
claim  new  evidence  proves that their  fossil  of
Archaeopteryx    is   genuine.     Two    prominent
astronomers continue to insist that it is a fake.

London:   The  whiff  of scandal has  been  drawing
crowds to the natural history branch of the British
Museum this summer, where a fossil described by the
museum as "perhaps the most important and  valuable
in  existence"  has been put on public display  for
the  first time in 21 years to refute charges  that
it is a fake.

The  fossil  in question is  generally  claimed  by
paleontologists   to  be  the  150-million-year-old
remains  of  an  Archaeopteryx  lithographica,  the
first  known bird.   It was discovered in a  German
limestone quarry in the middle of the 19th century,
and  immediately  purchased by  the  museum's  then
director,  Richard  Owen,  on the grounds that  the
faint impressions of wing skeletons surrounding the
bones  indicated  that  it was the  "missing  link"
between reptiles and birds.

Two years ago,  this widely accepted conclusion was
challenged  by  two  prominent--if  controversial--
British scientists,  the astronomer Sir Fred  Hoyle
and  N.C.   Wickramasinghe,   a  mathematician  and
astronomer at University College,  Cardiff.   Using
photographic  evidence to support claims  initially
put forward by Israeli physicist Lee Spetner,  they
argued that a 19th-century forger had cleverly used
a  mixture of paste and limestone fragments to  add
the  impression  of  wings to  a  genuine  dinosaur
fossil,  possibly to increase its sale value to the
museum.

The  staff  of the museum have reacted heatedly  to
the  charges,  which included the implication  that
they had since been responsible for covering up the
forgery.   In  a  detailed  rebuttal  published  in
Science last year,  they cited a list of  reasons--
including a precise matching of the hairline cracks
on  the  feathered areas of the two  slabs  between
which  the fossil was sandwiched--why they believed
the fossil to be genuine (Science,  2 May l986,  p.
622).

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, however, have remained on
the  attack.    Earlier  this  year  they  received
considerable  publicity in the British  media  when
they  held  a  press  conference  to  repeat  their
charges,  accusing the museum of further complicity
by  refusing  to provide some specified samples  of
the rock for spectroscopic analysis.

The  matching of the hairline  cracks,  they  said,
could  have been produced by the same process  that
produces fissures in plaster applied to a wall that
is  already  cracked  (the museum argues  that  the
presence of calcite crystals in the cracks  reveals
that they cannot be of recent origin).

Now the museum has responded at two further levels.
The  first  has been a public  exhibition,  mounted
under   the   title  "The  Feathers   Fly,"   which
summarizes  in popular form both the charges  being
made  by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe and the  detailed
response of the museum's scientific experts to each
of the individual claims.

The  second  has  been  the  release  of  some  new
ultraviolet   photographs  of   the   Archaeopteryx
fossil.  According to the museum staff, any organic
glue  mixed with the limestone cement used to  make
the  feather impressions would have shown up  under
the  ultraviolet source.   Cocks indicated that  he
would  have  been delighted,  in a way,  if it  had
turned out to be a forgery,  as the museum's  staff
had  been  the first to demonstrate in the case  of
the Piltdown man.   The fact that,  in contrast  to
the   fossil  bones,   the  areas  surrounding  the
feathers    did    not    fluoresce    demonstrates
ocnclusively,  they  argue,  that no  organic  glue
could have been used,  and therefore--since inorganic
glues   were   unknown   at  the   time--that   the
impressions  could  not have been made in  the  way
suggested.

"We  had  to go further than  our  Science  article
because  of the press conference given by Hoyle and
Wickramasinghe,  where they claimed to have refuted
the arguments that we made," says Robin Cocks,  the
museum's curator of paleontology.  "One year ago we
thought  they would go away;  we just got tired  of
pussy-footing around."

Cocks  says that,  although  other  paleontological
evidence  suggests that the Archaeopteryx  fossils,
of  which  five  other specimens  have  since  been
identified,  was  "the  right fossil in  the  right
place  at the right time," from a scientific  point
of  view the museum would be "delighted" if it  was
shown to be a forgery.

"Indeed,  there  are  plenty of young Turks in  the
paleontology  community  who  would  be  only   too
delighted to put the boot in;  but at present there
is  not one vertebrate paleontologist who  supports
the claims being made by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe,"
he says.

The two astronomers continue to reject the museum's
protests   to   innocence;   they  maintain   their
conviction that both the London fossil and a second
one discovered in the same location 16 years later,
which  is  currently  in a  musum  in  Berlin,  are
forgeries.    They  play  down,  for  example,  the
significance  of  the latest experiments  that  the
museum claims are conclusive.

"We  have  looked into the whole  question  of  the
behavior  of  material under ultraviolet light  and
have found that although most organic substances do
indeed flow under such light,  not all of them do,"
says  Wickramasinghe.   "We therefore feel that  if
could  have been possible to devise  organic  glues
that  do  not  fluorese,  so the  weakness  of  the
fluorescence  effect does not prove very much,  and
the  new evidence is therefore not as  decisive  as
the museum is claiming."

Wickramasinghe  rejects the claim that he and Hoyle
are  keen to show that the Archaeopteryx is a  fake
partly  because it would provide support for  their
own broader--and equally controversial--ideas  that
life  originated in space and subsequently  arrived
on the earth in a meteorite shower about 65 million
years ago.   "We have absolutely no vested interest
in  showing the fossil to be a forgery,  since  our
own theory of life from space would not fall if the
fossil was shown to be genuine," he says.

He  is  also  strongly  critical  of  the  museum's
refusal to provide its critics twith a small sample
for  analysis  of  the limestone  from  immediately
beneath  the  fossil  (an  earlier  sample,   whose
analysis has recently been completed by Spetner  in
Israel, came from a different part of the rock slab
in  which  the  fossil  was  found).    "The  whole
authenticity  issue  could be resolved with a  mere
pinhead of the material," Wickramasinghe says.

Cocks at the Natural History Museum maintains  that
the  astronomers  have  yet to  produce  sufficient
"proof"  of  their hypothesis  that  would  justify
providing  them  with the new sample they  are  now
requesting.  "If  you  were in charge of the  crown
jewels,  would  you start prizing out emeralds  and
handing  them out to anyone who claimed  that  they
were fake?" he says.

Feelings   among  the  museum's  scientific   staff
continue  to  run high about the charges that  have
been made because of both their nature and the time
spent trying to refute them.   Many are also  upset
about  the  personal  language in which  what  they
describe as the "outrageous allegations" have  been
expressed.

"We  feel  a  little  sad that  two  scientists  as
eminent  as Fred Hoyle and Wickramasinghe  have  to
back   up   their  arguments  by   accusing   other
scientists of being dishonest," says Angela Milner,
curator of fossil birds.

Indeed,  some  members of the scientific staff  are
uneasy  about  the  evenhandedness  of  the  public
exhibition,  where the evidence for and against the
physicists'  charges is given equal space,  leaving
the conclusion open for visitors to decide.  "If we
had been doing the exhibition,  it would have  been
more open and shut," says Cocks.

But  the museum authorities have been able to  have
the  last  word.   The  exhibition  organizers  had
produced   for  sale  two  sets  of  buttons,   one
declaring  "Archaeopteryx is a fake" and the  other
that  "Archaeopteryx  is  genuine."   In  the  end,
however,  only  one of  the  buttons,  however,  is
available  at  the  museum shop;  the  prospect  of
thousands  of  school children  circulating  London
with  official-looking badges declaring one of  the
museum's prize possessions to be a forgery seems to
have been something that even the most  open-minded
of museum administrators found difficult to accept.


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