Dinosaurs in the Attic (43 page)

*21
The eggs did bring grief from an unexpected quarter. When Andrews returned to the States the following winter to raise more money for the expedition, he was amazed at popular interest in the eggs. As a fund-raising stunt, he decided to "auction off" an extraneous egg. Spirited bidding followed, with Colonel Austin Colgate winning out with a $5,000 bid (he gave the egg to Colgate University.) Unfortunately, the Chinese and Mongolians got wind of the auction and thought that each dinosaur egg was actually worth $5,000. Here was proof that the Americans, just as they had suspected, were plundering their country of priceless treasures. This was one of many factors that led to the cancellation of the expedition years

*22
Placental mammals are characterized by young that develop fully in the womb, nourished by the placenta. Marsupial mammals (such as the kangaroo) bear their young after a short gestation period, and the young develop in the mother's pouch. The true significance of Andrews' discovery wasn't that mammals lived during the Cretaceous, but that they had
already
evolved into two distinct groups at such an early date. It implied that mammals were a lot older than had been thought.

*23
It is ironic that the only time Andrews was actually shot, it was by his own hand. In 1928, he shot himself in the leg while drawing his revolver.

†24
The Buriats were the dominant Mongol tribes, to whom the Russians had given bureaucratic control of Outer Mongolia when they "helped" the Mongolians throw off the Chinese yoke during the Mongolian revolution.

Chapter 9

*25
Of course, anyone who has followed the recent developments in evolutionary theory realizes just how mistaken this belief was—as mistaken as Lord Kelvin when he claimed several years before Einstein appeared that virtually all of the problems in physics had been solved, and that future researchers would merely be adding digits to the right of the decimal point.

*26
A total of seventy to eighty scientists studied Neblina in a series of team visits.

Chapter 10

*27
Those who study dinosaurs are not so fortunate. Reptilian teeth increase in size as the animal grows, and thus become a much poorer way to identify a species. Reptilian teeth are for the most part shaped like simple Cones, making it impossible to identify a species from its teeth.

*28
It is important to note that McKenna doesn't dispute the asteroid-impact theory per se; he merely contends that the dinosaurs were extinct
before
the asteroid struck.

†29
A bolide is a large meteoroid that either explodes in the atmosphere or strikes the earth, or both.

*30
In the days before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulated the use of hazardous chemicals, Museum preparators often placed the skeleton in a shallow tray filled with benzene, which, when placed in strong sunlight, turned the bones a brilliant white.

†31
Although the foregoing methods may seem bizarre, they have been standard procedure in most natural history museums and large universities for many years.

*32
Jumbo lived only three more years after his arrival in America, so that would work out to an unlikely one thousand a day. Since Barnum tainted any facts he came in contact with, most of the stories about Jumbo are suspect.

*33
For an explanation of type specimens, see page 6. It was later concluded that Jumbo did
not
represent a new species, but only a variant of an already known species. He was, alas, reduced to a subspecies, a much less important designation.

*34
The excavation was immortalized by Peale in a painting showing the beast being taken out of its pit, bone by bone. For years, Peale exhibited the mounted skeleton in his museum in Philadelphia. The skeleton was later lost—God knows how—and remains missing to this day.

*35
A number of mastodons and mammoths were mounted with their tusks reversed in the nineteenth century, all based on an erroneous mounting done by the Russians in St. Petersburg. The Warren mounting, of which an illustration still exists. was probably based on the St. Petersburg mount.

Chapter 11

*36
This collection of rats represents most of the species of
Rattus
in the world and is a highly important series from a scientific standpoint.

*37
Many people erroneously think of evolution as a path from extinct animals to living animals, with humans at the top. Actually, evolution is thought in terms of relatedness more than progression.

*38
The excruciatingly slow elevators in the museum are infamous.

†39
One of our librarians told me that on one occasion, several guards were discreetly poking around an office in the library looking for "a big black snake." The snake was reportedly found in the basement, quite a bit fatter from a plentiful diet of mice.

††40
Since the placement of this exhibition label, this animal has been renamed
Pan troglodytes.

*41
This corridor, stretching a long West Side block, is alleged to be the longest straight corridor in New York City.

Chapter 12

*42
And most insects are beetles. Thus, an alien visitor to our planet could accurately report back that animal life on earth consists of beetles, with a few strange variants.

Chapter 13

*43
One of the favorite resting spots for the frogs is inside the skull's eye sockets.

*44
The Greek word
herpeton,
from
herpo,
to creep. denoted something that crawled; herpetology is the science that embraces reptiles and amphibians.

Chapter 14

*45
Rothschild's father had disinherited him, according to Walter, because he had not gone into the family banking business, but his father could not deprive him of his title and estates.

*46
The tree was to go in the middle of the hall, surrounded by a bit of its native habitat, but the exhibition department truncated the exhibit and today only the crown is on display in a case.

Chapter 15

*47
The Koryak called the constellation
Ursa Major
"The Wild Reindeer Buck"; their name for the Morning Star was "Suspended Breath," and they called the Milky Way, "Clay River."

*48
We know that most of the warriors depicted are young because their clothing is unadorned and their shirts are of white manufacture.

*49
Anthropologists made life casts of the faces, and then sculpted the eyes, hair, ornaments, and shoulders to make a conventional bust portrait.

*50
This practice of making life casts—often by attaching real but ethnically incorrect bodies to correct faces—continues to this day. In the Asian Hall, the faces of several nineteenth century Yakut are attached to casts made from the body of a young curatorial assistant in the Anthropology Department. Another figure was made out of the head and hands of a Buddhist monk who is still very much alive.

Chapter 17

*51
The diamonds were discovered by a gem expert at Tiffany's when his cutting blade was stopped by a small inclusion while he was slicing the meteorite. He found many such inclusions, and to test whether they were indeed diamonds, he removed one, pulverized it, and cemented the dust to a gem-faceting wheel. He then tried to facet a diamond with the wheel, as diamond dust is the only material that is hard enough to facet a diamond. As he touched the diamond to the wheel, he heard that "peculiar singing sound" which can only be made by a diamond cutting another diamond.

*52
A meteor is a bit of extraterrestrial material that burns up in the earth's atmosphere. If it reaches the ground it becomes a meteorite, While in outer space, these objects are referred to as meteoroids, or asteroids if they are very large. A meteoroid that explodes while streaking through the earth's atmosphere is called a bolide.

*53
This humming or singing noise is often noted by witnesses. It is caused by the irregular fragments spinning rapidly as they descend.

*54
Meteorites, like most metallic objects, rust. It takes anywhere from several thousand to a million years for an iron meteorite to rust into a brown pile of shingles. The meteorites that have survived the longest on the earth come from Antarctica, where they have been frozen for 900,000 years.

*55
This pit was so large that half a century later a Museum curator visited the site and reported that the hole was still there, sprinkled with rusty iron shingles and flakes.

*56
An electron
microprobe
is a device that determines the composition of a specimen by bombarding it with a beam of electrons.

Chapter 18

*57
The following description of the theft relies heavily on the
True
magazine article, and it should be pointed out that Kuhn had his own reasons for glamorizing the theft, as he was beginning negotiations with film producers at the time. The actor Robert Conrad helped Kuhn rewrite the article, and it was certainly to their advantage to make it as exciting as possible. There are accounts of what happened that do not agree in all details with the story presented here. In my opinion, however, Kuhn's is the most reliable, since it is a firsthand account written shortly after the robbery.

*58
Even his release from jail on a later charge in December 1984—twenty years later—merited front-page news in New York City.

*59
There are two varieties of jade: nephrite and jadeite.

*60
Since then, a fifty-ton jade boulder has been discovered in Alaska.