GEOL 204: The Fossil Record

What Good is a Fossil Record?

• Life of the past was different than today
• Life in the past includes both the ancestors of living forms, and also of entirely extinct groups
• ONLY evidence of extinct branches of the Tree of Life
• Ancient species include the transitions in forms and ways of life that produced modern forms
• Groups now distinct from each other have ancestors distinct from the descendants
• Every living species, and every living individual, has a common ancestor with all other species and individuals at some point in the History of Life
• Some modes of life have been occupied by very different groups of living things in the past
• On the other hand, there are many body plans found in the fossil record which are very different from anything today

But are there any pragmatic benefits? YES!

• Fossils are one of the primary indicators of past climate change (which we saw early in the course)
• Fossils are markers of "pristine" (non-human influenced) biodiversity
• ONLY evidence of the reality of mass extinction events: without the fossil record, we would not be aware that situations can arise that wipe out huge majorities of the living individuals and species on the Earth!

And some benefits are even aesthetic:

• Many fossils are aesthetic pleasing as objects
• Fossils are part of the natural heritage of the world, so that most nations have national parks or monuments centered on such fossils, or showcase them in museums, and so on

This final lecture we'll look at some of these big issues of the fossil record in society: who owns the fossil record? And where we should go to get information from the fossil record. But first, we'll look at people who misrepresent the fossil record.

Misrepresenting the Fossil Record

All the science discussed throughout the course is predicated on the idea that fossils are the authentic record of life in the past. Our disagreements about them would be differences of interpretation, but we accepted that the bones, teeth, wood, leaves, shells, etc. are the remains of REAL bones, teeth, wood, leaves, shells, etc. But what happens when they aren't? Or aren't in their original association? What happens when people--for whatever reason--fake the fossil record? Although they are relatively rare, there are (sadly) many notable examples. And these illuminate some of the different motives behind making faux fossils.

Fake Fossils for Profit: Sales

Since many people will pay money to own fossils as trophies or art pieces, there are many cases of fake fossils being made for profit. A famous case was the specimen called "Archaeoraptor liaoningensis". A 1999 issue of National Geographic Magazine featuring the newly-discovered Yixian and Jiufotang feathered dinosaur fossils announced a fossil of an as-yet unnamed species. Its front end was very derived, but its hips and tail were fairly primitive. Paleontologists (including this one!) were very curious about this specimen, as it had not been described in the technical literature. And there was a good reason for that: it was a hoax, and every attempt to publish it in a scientific journal failed peer-review as the reviewers noted the falsehood of the specimen. In February 2000, National Geographic announced that it was indeed a fake, combining the front end of a bird (Yanornis) and the rear end of a dromaeosaurid (Microraptor). A study in 2001 eventually showed the steps needed to construct the hoax. The hoax had been done in China, where a market had already been developed in the sale of fossils (despite the fact this is illegal in the People's Republic!): the more complete the fossil, the better! The concern wasn't the information from the fossil, but rather how much money they could make from it.

Fake Fossils for Profit: Showmanship

The end of the 1700s and the early 1800s were a time of many discoveries in the young United States. Among the most famous natural history finds of the time was the discovery in 1799 of the first complete mastodon (Mammut americanum) near Newburgh, NY. It's excavation by artist/naturalist Charles Wilson Peale was a celebrated local sensation, as was his display of this complete skeleton at his Museum in Philadelphia in 1806. The success of the mastodon bringing in paying visitors did not go unnoticed, so that a generation later someone figured that creating their own even more impressive skeletons would be yet more lucrative. That person was Albert Koch, an exhibitor of "curiosities". In 1835 he had set up an exhibit hall in St. Louis, and five years later received word of a complete mastodon found on a Missouri farm. He acquired this, as well as other partial mastodon skeletons. He combined the different specimens together (with wooden spacers between the vertebrae to enhance the length), resulting in a skeleton 32' long (twice that of a real mastodon), with the tusks mounted in an odd position. His signs declared this fossil the Missourium, largest of all terrestrial animals.

Fraudulent Data for Personal Glory

Vishwa Jit Gupta is a retired paleontologist who taught at Punjab University. He published over 450 papers during his career, and helped to document (so it seemed) the Paleozoic history of fossil organisms of the Himalayan region. However, his work was called into question when others were unable to replicate his finds: for instance, a site he claimed produced clearly Devonian fossils were found by others to only contain Silurian ones. Others began to study his publication and found that specimens he claimed to have discovered were actually specimens previously found in other parts of the world by other researchers. (In fact, he even plagiarized several images.)

Fake Fossils for National Pride & for Supporting a Particular Hypothesis

In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, early humans had been found in France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and other continental European countries, but not yet the United Kingdom. Furthermore, there was a particular theory of human origins developed at this time (this was before the fossils of earlier homininans from Africa had been discovered): it was thought that humans developed our characteristic powerful brain first, and only later developed a fully upright stance, grasping hands, reduced lower jaw, and so forth. That changed at the 12 December 1912 meeting of the Geological Society of London. At that event, a paper was presented by paleoanthropologist Arthur Woodward Smith, who told the following story: In the years 1908 to 1912, amateur archaeologist and antiquities collector Charles Dawson and his crew had found various remains from the Pleistocene deposits of human-like fossils and artifacts. (Dawson claimed that the workmen saw the top of the skull sticking out of the sediment, and thought it was a fossilized coconut). In the summer of 1912 Dawson approached Smith Woodward to help him collect, and the two worked together. However, Smith Woodward happened to be gone every time Dawson actually found remains of the proto-human:

• The skull that Smith Woodward reconstructed from the remains had a human (or human-like) upper skull, as well as much more ape-like teeth and lower jaw; he named this a new species "Eoanthropus dawsoni" (Dawson's dawn man). This was Britain's major contribution to paleoanthropology, and it conformed to the "big brains first" model, since its braincase was practically modern but its jaw ape like.
• Several other paleontologists and paleoanthropologists immediately challenged the idea that these bones and teeth were from the same species, or that they were in fact from the Ice Age. However, many accepted these specimens as genuine because they fit into their views. In 1915 Dawson brought some more specimens and artifacts to Smith Woodward from a new site about 2 miles from the originally locality; however, Dawson died in 1916 before revealing that location. After his death, not a single "Eoanthropus" fossil was ever found again.
• However, in the following decades discoveries from Asia and (especially) Africa demonstrate that the "big brains first" model did not fit the vast majority of members of the human ancestral lineage: instead, they tended to be upright first, and only developed big brains later. Suspicion that "Piltdown Man" was a hoax grew; "Eoanthropus" was becoming less and less consilient with the growing body of evidence of other members of the human lineage whose authenticity was not in question.
• It was confirmed in the 1950s as new chemical age-dating techniques became available, and showed that these were not a single ancient fossil, but instead a medieval human skull, a more recent orangutan jaw, and fossil chimpanzee teeth, all treated with chemicals to appear fossilized. To this day we do not know for certain who the hoaxer was, although Dawson is the primary suspect, nor the actual motive. But it is clear that many people fell for this forgery because it fit comfortably with their preconceived notions and their national prejudices.
• (It should be noted that Dawson was linked to over 38 other hoaxes concerning antiquities.) It is uncertain if Smith Woodward was in on the hoax, or simply the "patsy" of the con-game. It appears that at least some of their contemporaries were aware that it was a hoax, as Dawson & Smith Woodward did uncover the rib of a wooly mammoth carved to resemble that most British of tools, a cricket bat!. (Smith Woodward considered it an authentic club of the Piltdown Man.)

Fake (Images of) Fossils: Trolling on the Internet

There are even non-intentional hoaxes! Some of these arise by people not understanding online communities... One infamous case that has had longer term consequence involves the old website Worth1000.com (later renamed DesignCrowd. This site encouraged people to show off their Photoshop skills by holding contests with a particular theme and presenting the submissions of the modified pictures of the contestants. One such contest was "Archaeological Anomalies", with the rule "Your job is to show a picture of an archaeological discovery that looks so real, had it not appeared at Worth1000, people might have done a double take." And the evidence shows that some of the Photoshoppers definitely passed this test! They took field photographs (like this one of the Cornell Univeristy team digging a mastodon in New York State which became this picture of a skeleton of a giant! (Here is a collection of some more of these!) These are pretty amusing, but sadly there are those who didn't know the original context of the modified pictures and actually think these are skeletons of human giants! A similar case happened when a photograph of a bunch of Civil War-era soldiers with a pterosaur was created as a publicity shot for a 2000 science fiction television series FreakyLinks (one of the first TV shows or movies to have its own "in-universe" website which went live before the show aired.) Unfortunately, fans of the paranormal think this really WAS a pterosaur alive in the 1800s, and long after people have forgotten the show this image lives on in online paranormal communities.

Paleontology Pseudoscience: Ignoring the the Scientific Method

There is a continuous gradation between well-established scientific ideas; ideas which are not as strongly supported but not currently rejected by current evidence; ideas on the fringes of science which are less well-supported than the main current of the field; and actual outright pseudoscience. As such, a precise definition of pseudoscience is difficult. The astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan suggested the following: that pseudoscientific ideas "purport to use the methods and findings of science, while in fact they are faithless to its nature--often because they are based on insufficient evidence or because they ignore clues that point the other way."

There are many cases where people make pseudoscientific--or at least poorly supported--claims about fossil material, often because they are simply unfamiliar with the details of the science and only have a superficial appreciation of how paleontology and geology work. For instance, British cell biologist and science writer Brian Ford has recently written a book on, and is on a speaking tour about, his idea that all dinosaurs were strictly aquatic and unable to move around on land. Although some 19th Century and early 20th Century paleontologists considered that at least the giant sauropods were mostly aquatic, that idea was long since overturned by functional anatomy, ichnology, and paleoenvironmental analysis. So the "strictly aquatic dinosaurs" hypothesis is not supported by the evidence.

In other cases, the idea is pseudoscientific now but was once a valid idea: the supporter simply refuses to acknowledge the falsification of their once-potentially-possible hypothesis. A classic example of this is the "Birds are not dinosaurs" (BAND) proponents, who reject all the evidence that birds originated among theropods.

A more extreme example is pseudoscientific ideas is supporting the non-parsimonious, non-consilient idea and say that the reason it is rejected is a conspiracy by "mainstream science." One such example from the evolutionary realm is the "Aquatic Ape Hypothesis", the idea that somewhere between the split between humans and chimps and the rise of Homo sapiens that the homininan lineage went through a primarily aquatic phase. (To be fair, as discussed earlier, H. sapiens does seem to have gotten more of our food from the water than other related primates, but through nets and fishhooks and the like.) While this idea does not contradict natural laws (neither does the BAND or the fully aquatic dinosaur idea), it is not the simplest solution for the morphological, ichnological, and sedimentological data. Indeed, had humans gone through an aquatic phase (in which they lived in D-World!), the record of early stem-humans would be expected to be a lot more complete than it is! Paleoanthropologists do not reject the Aquatic Ape hypothesis due to some sort of vested interest; they do so because better evidence points to a different (fully terrestrial) solution.

Farther from reality still are examples of pareidolia: seeing things that aren't actually there. The human mind naturally sees shapes and patterns even when they aren't there: this had selective advantages in the past (individuals acting on the false belief that there is a predator at the watering hole were more likely to survive and have offspring than those not acting on the false belief that there ISN'T one when there is...) (By the way, we are VERY likely to see faces in places where there aren't any really faces!)

Some of the most spectacular paleontological pseudosciences came from pareidolia. In the 1970s and 1980s carbonate petrologist Chonosuke Okamura began to describe a number of amazing fossils from limestone thin sections from the Silurian Period. These included the first ever Silurian bird, the first Silurian camel, the first Silurian dinosaur, and more. Not only were these hundreds of millions of years older than these groups should have been, the were all microscopic!! His work eventually found microscopic Silurian people, including princesses. Since these were really just shapes he was seeing rather than real fossils, the peer reviewed literature did not publish his findings. So at his own expense he published his own Original Reports of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory, and sent copies to many paleontological libraries around the world (including the Smithsonian.)

Another famous case of paleontological pareidolic pseudoscience (also, coincidentally, from carbonate geology) was the work of micropaleontologist Randolph Kirkpatrick. He had a productive career in science, but he developed a radical new hypothesis outside of these publications. He had long studied nummulitids: a distinctive group of gigantic macroscopic foraminiferans common in the Eocene to Miocene. Their distinctiveness makes them important index fossils for those epochs.

But where most paleontologists found nummulitids only in limestones, Kirkpatrick would see them in sand grains (even though sand grains are much smaller than nummulitids!!), in volcanic and plutonic igneous rocks, and even in diamond and meteorites!! He developed a new model of how rocks formed, which he published as The Nummulosphere: an account of the Organic Origin of so-called Igneous Rocks and Abyssal Red Clays. In this he explained that ALL rocks were actually derived directly from nummulitids. (Because he saw nummulitids in meteorites he had to conclude that those rocks didn't come from space, because he thought that the idea that there was life in space was just too crazy!)

One of the most commonly head pseudoscience is the prehistoric survivor paradigm: the idea that non-avian dinosaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, the stem-whale Basilosaurus, and more all survive in the modern world and are the source of legends and tales of dragons, of the Loch Ness monster, of the ropen, of sea serpents, and so forth. It is true that sometimes creatures once thought extinct turn out to be alive. The archetype of this are coelacanths: fish common in the late Paleozoic and throughout the Mesozoic but apparently died out at the K/Pg, only to turn up alive in the Indian Ocean. Yes, a genus of coelacanth does still live: but that doesn't mean that EVERY well-loved ancient form still lives! In order to demonstrate that one needs the actual physical evidence of it.

The most widespread and politically-influential pseudoscience about paleontology and related fields is evolution denialism (traditionally branded as "creationism" or "creation science", and more recently as "intelligent design theory".)

Why would people reject evolution anyway, particular in nations with an excellent fossil record and easy access to information by almost everyone?

All cultures of the world have had some idea about where the world, its life, and humans came from. For many the traditional idea is that some supernatural force of great power (a god or multiple gods) brought them into being. But they disagreed on details: which god; in what order; by what process; etc. For instance, Judaic chronologies traditionally held that Earth, Life, and Humanity were created over the course of the six day "Creation Week" described in Genesis, and that this was roughly six thousand years ago. Their neighboring cultures (Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks) thought that the Earth was created many 10s of thousands of years ago. Some (the Maya, for instance) had even longer time scales, and Hindu cosmologies suggesting an infinitely old, repeating Universe (with a present incarnation many many billions of years old.) But many of these thought that the world was basically unchanged since the Dawn of Time, and did not consider any lineal connections of descent and ancestry among the species of the world.

During the Age of Enlightenment (18th and early 19th Centuries) there were many arguments for and against naturalistic views of how the Universe operates and came to be. For example, David Hume observed order arising from mindless mechanistic processes (snowflakes from water, crystals from solution, and so forth), and considered that an ordered world might likewise come out of similar type processes. In contrast, others argued that the apparent Design of the Universe implied a Designer. This was most famously (although not firstly) argued as the "Watchmaker Argument" of William Paley in his 1802 Natural Theology "Natural theology" was that branch of theology that attempted to understand the nature of the Divine not through revealed wisdom and scripture, but from study of the natural world. It had a long tradition in the West (e.g., medieval bestiaries, where the aspects of different animals were interpreted as moral lessons for Mankind.) Many of the early geologists and paleontologists were natural theologians: Linnaeus and Buckland and Agassiz and Lyell and others. But these naturalists also had to accept their discoveries of Earth vastly ancient beyond the chronologies of the Bible or the Classical World, with changing environmental conditions and inhabited by succession after succession of different life forms.

Of course, much of this came to a head with Darwin and Wallace's discovery of Natural Selection. They had discovered a mechanism to produce design without any need for outside influence: simply variation, heredity, and superfecundity.

The result of the publication of The Origin resulted in some rejection of Evolution by people within religious communities, but it was far from universal. Some religious thinkers were very much in support of Darwin and Wallace's new ideas, and some scientists rejected evolution (and more specifically the model of Natural Selection) at that time.

This sets the stage for the 20th and 21st Century American situation, and the rise of organized evolution deniers. But what do evolution deniers really believe? And why do they believe it? Despite what some might want to think, there is no simple dichotomy between "godless materialist evolutionists" and "Biblical-thumping fundamentalist Young Earth Creationists". In fact, there is a spectrum of beliefs (although not all of them are broadly represented in society at equal numbers by any means!). That said, the most influential and common evolution deniers are the Young Earth Creationists (YEC). They conceive of a world only thousands or maybe tens of thousands of years, a literal Biblical Flood and Noah's Ark, a literal Garden of Eden at the beginning, etc., etc. Looking just at the YECs, how wrong is their chronology? The actual age of the Earth at about 4.557 Gyr, but they claim a mere 6000 yrs. This is exactly proportional to claiming that the distance from Washington, DC to Los Angeles, CA (3690 km, or 2293 mi) is really only 4.86 m (16 feet)!! And in order to do this, one has to reject physics (nuclear decay, the speed of light, and so forth), astronomy, geology, chemistry: indeed, the whole corpus of modern Science.

Many have observed that the real reason for rejecting this aspect of science wasn't the science itself: it was the perceived implications of a material origin for humanity on the source of morality. They feel that if humans were not divinely created there could be no absolute morality dictated (literally) from On High, and that lacking such any sort of behavior might be condoned. (Of course this ignores millennia of work by ethical philosophers to find reasons for moral behavior outside of divine command, but that's outside the scope of this class!)

Additionally, this is part of what Carl Sagan called "The Great Demotions": the perception by some that as Science discovers the size and age of the Universe, Earth, and Life, that we seem more insignificant:

So why should we matter that some people fail to accept real things for personal reasons? What is the harm? In and of itself, that's all well and good. But part of the problem is that failure to think critically on one issue is generally linked with failure to think critically in most issues. In other words, pseudosciences tend to travel in packs. So those who reject evolution also tend to reject the reality of climate change, a phenomenon which effects all of us and which requires voting citizens to act.

Basically, once you accept that an ideology trumps evidence in one sphere, it becomes difficult to use your critical faculties in others. So the harm in rejecting well-supported discoveries like the antiquity of the Earth and the evolution of Life makes one susceptible to accepting untrue ideas, which will result in faulty decision making.

Who Owns the Fossil Record? Issues Around the Commercial Trade in Fossils

Some fossils obviously ARE commodities: coal, petroleum, chalk, diatomite, etc. And as such they are commercially bought and sold. But what about the sort of fossils that this course focused on: the body and trace fossils of organisms as object?

In order to look into this, we need to consider the different types of people who search for fossils, and their motivations.

There are professional paleontologists: normally motivated by research, and normally employed by museums, universities, and other academic institutions. However, some might be employed by resource-management organizations (such as the US or state geological surveys; National Parks or Monuments; state parks; etc.): some of these may do research as well, but often they have the additional job of overseeing the protection of fossil sites and so forth. (And these jobs aren't mutually exclusive: the recently-retired State Paleontologist of Montana was also a Professor at Montana State University AND a curator of the Museum of the Rockies!) Professional paleontologists are the only group likely to develop major expeditions, and are the only group likely to prospect in formations that aren't yet known to produce lots of fossils: after all, discovery is our job! Given professionals tend to specialize on particular taxa (and thus might not be limited to working in just one region), but some work mostly on particular faunas or formations.

Another group is avocational collectors: hobbyists, enthusiasts, "amateurs" (in both the sense that the don't get paid to find fossils, and that they do it because they love it.) Avocational collectors are BY FAR the largest community. The tend to generate interest in fossils, and in Nature and Science, among the general public. Many important finds have been made by avocational collectors (which they often donate to museum collections). In general they tend mostly to prospect sites known to produce large quantities of common fossils (after all, they are more likely to do this for a day on the weekend, not a six-week expedition.)

The smallest group are commercial collectors. They tend to specialize in a particular geographic region and a particular set of formations known to produce good fossils: after all, they are doing this for a livelihood, so they need to have some likely return on their investment. In some cases, they are the best outfits able to field crews and run preparation labs in the regions they operate, although some teams might be ill-equipped or relatively unskilled (but the same can be said about some avocational and professionals...) In some cases, the commercial collectors cooperate with researchers to bring the fossils into the public trust; however, in some cases (as discussed below), there are conflicts between the goals of professionals and commercials.

Some historical commercial collectors were major contributors in the history of paleontology, such as Mary Anning (1799-1847) of England and the Sternberg Family of the western U.S. (The latter are an extension of the practice of hired crews used by the professional paleontologists: a very common practice in the 19th Century in the American West.)

Proponents of commercial collecting and sales of fossils put forth some important arguments:

• Are sometimes able to do work that museums & universities aren't able to do, perhaps because they are working in formations that professionals do not work in as much or going to places they aren't exploring at the moment
• At least some of the commercial collectors are skilled individuals
• If not collected, fossils already exposed will erode away
• In the US & some other countries, fossils are considered mineral rights that private land owners may dispose of as they wish
• Commercial collection may an avenue for avocational collectors who do not want to go on to be research professionals
• Many fossil species are common, so that sale of these to private citizens does not represent a loss of information to Science

(Here is a commentary taking the pro-commercial collector position).

However, others point out that there are many problems with the commercial collection of fossils:

• Fossils sold to private citizen are removed from research, the public, and posterity and public trust. (In some cases, they might be destroyed as they are sliced and transformed into jewelry or decorative wall hangings).
• Because they cannot pay for access to private lands (NSF and other funding agencies don't have "bribe" as a category...)
• In at least some places, commercial collecting done by people without training (damaging fossils, and sometimes people!)
• Commoditization of fossils encourages:
• Overexploitation of the resources (until sites get "dug out")
• Collecting for "trophy" fossils, not for the scientific data they have (even visually boring specimens may have key information)
• Incentivizes frauds (as seen above)

(Here is a commentary taking the anti-commercial collection position.)

The most famous story of a conflict between commercial collectors and professional paleontologists, as well as issues of land management, Native American rights, and much more, is the case of "Sue" the Tyrannosaurus rex. In 1990 the Black Hills Institute (BHI, a commercial collecting firm operating out of Hill City, South Dakota) was exploring for fossils in the Hell Creek Formation (the latest Cretaceous of western North America) on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Team member Sue Hendrickson went off on her own and discovered what turned out to be the largest (at the time of discovery) and most complete (even to this day) T. rex skeleton ever found. The BHI dug up the specimen and brought it back to Hill City. However, a dispute arose: the land owner (Maurice Williams) claimed that the $5000 they had paid him was NOT for the specimen, but simply the right to prospect his land; Williams argued that the specimen belonged to him, not BHI. Because Williams is a member of the Sioux nation, this dispute became an issue of federal law. In 1992 the FBI and National Guard came to BHI and took control of the fossil. A legal decision in 1995 determined that "Sue" was indeed Williams property. The specimen went to the auction block at Sotheby's, where for $8,362,500 the Field Museum in Chicago acquired the specimen (backed by Disney and McDonalds).

In the United States, fossils are generally regarded as mineral rights rather than antiquities (such as artifacts and human remains). The laws that govern them depends on the type of land concerned:

• On private land, fossils are the property of the land owner
• National Parks and National Monuments are highly protected, requiring major permitting in order to excavate them
• Other types of public land might have different rules: State land, County land, Bureau of Land Management, National Forest, etc., etc. They might require permits on whether you can collect at all; what type of fossils; how much you can take out; where the fossils must go after collected (i.e., can you keep them? Do they have to go to a museum? Etc.); and so on

These protections don't always work, though: they have to actually be enforced. Mismanagement of Fossil Cycad National Monument in the 1920-1950s was such that people would just take away fossils from the Monument! With no more fossils to display or protect, the National Monument was decommissioned in 1957.

Other nations have different laws. In some fossils are regarded as protected antiquities or as part of the natural heritage, and are the property of the State (or the Crown), regardless of the private vs. public nature of the land they are found on. In others there are no protections anywhere except their national parks. And many nations have protections that effectively exist only on paper: big "grey" markets (really black markets, but with protection of government officials having been paid off.)

Recent years have seen the repatriation of illegally acquired fossils to the country of their origin: in particular Mongolia and China.

A particularly famous case of repatriation, however, actually removed fossils from the public trust. This is the case of Kennewick Man, an 8.9-9 ka skull discovered in 1996 from the banks of the Columbia River in Washington State. The morphology of the skull is more like a Polynesian or European than a Native American, so some paleoanthropologists suggested this was NOT from a population that arrived over Bering, but instead from some other part of the world. Local Native American tribes, however, argued that this specimen was one of their owned, and following the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) should be returned to them for burial. In 2004 the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit argued that the specimen was too far removed from present day to be securely related ethnically to any extant group. New DNA analysis published in 2015 did actually demonstrate the close genetic affinity of Kennewick Man to native populations of the American Northwest, so it was announced in Spring 2016 that the specimen will be repatriated.

Paleontology and the Public Eye

Paleontology needs to get its information out from the lab to the public. What are the ways this can happen?

The technical literature is a traditional method, but that is really for communication of scientist-to-scientist. Public talks are equally old, and still pretty common, but are now enhanced by such things as outreach websites. Or there are site-based outreach, of which museums are the main method.

Of course, science news is one way, but the news media have their own agenda. Most importantly, of course, news reports are brief, but science is in the details.

The blogosphere allows for more detailed scientific information, but not sites are equally reliable or useful. Some are by professional scientists; others by highly knowledgeable science writers; but some are just by fans who might not know the professional information as well. More problematic, though, are websites by anti-scientific organizations or by people promoting fringe ideas.

So, What Should Everyone Know About the Prehistoric Past?

What are the main "take aways" from a course like this? What should everyone in the public know about the prehistoric past? Here are my suggestions:

• The World is knowable, and Science represents our attempt to understand it

• The Earth is ancient, but the processes that govern it are ongoing and observable

• Rocks are a record of ancient environments, and the fossils in them the remains and traces of prehistoric life

• Life is billions of years old, but all of Earth's life is one single interconnected instance: all living things past and present are part of the same Tree of Life

• The world and its inhabitants have changed dramatically, in terms of pretty much every aspect you can imagine

• Life as a whole is resilient, but species and ecosystems can be devastated by rapid and intense environmental change

• Humanity has an evolutionary history: we are members of the African ape clade; our origin and most of our species' history was in Africa; our biology evolved primarily in that context; yet we have continued to evolve