Word: palaeontologists
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...discovery prompted immediate controversy; disbelievers quickly emerged. Among them was Professor Teuku Jacob, a senior Indonesian palaeontologist, who was not part of the discovery team. Jacob argued that the bones were merely those of a small human with an abnormally small head. Late last year, in breach of a memorandum of understanding between Australian and Indonesian discoverers, Jacob removed the bones to his own laboratory - a move many believed was aimed at proving his own theory. That act ignited a public feud. But last month, when the bones were returned, the row turned nasty...
...special substance that is painted or sprayed on and hardens into a rubbery mold. Equally infuriating to scientists is the possibility that the supposed illicit casting may have altered the skull so no exact record of it can now be made. "It's simply outrageous," says Peter Brown, the palaeontologist attached to the Morwood team. "It's commercial and intellectual property, and it's a unique cultural relic...
...golf course where you can't help but shoot sub-par. Bones abound: even the untrained eye can spot them protruding from the gray limestone outcrops. In an area of 40 sq. km, Archer's teams have found and named hundreds of sites since 1976, when he and palaeontologist Henk Godthelp decided to check out reports that Riversleigh - then a cattle station, now part of Lawn Hill National Park - might contain valuable fossils. And it did - in the same way that the Louvre could be said to house some nice paintings. Riversleigh has since provided an annual bounty of exquisitely...
...school geology teacher. Between them, they brush rocks, sort and label them, and treat fossils with a preservative. Everyone lugs rock-filled hessian bags to a pick-up point, from where they're eventually trucked to laboratories in Sydney and at Mount Isa's Riversleigh Fossil Centre. There, resident palaeontologist John Scanlon frees the bones by dissolving the surrounding limestone in dilute acetic acid. Since the vats were installed earlier this year, "I've just been hooked," says Scanlon, who at 12 became fascinated with Australian snakes and is now Australia's leading expert on the fossilized type. He holds...
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