This is kind of the science equivalent of discovering a new Beethoven score.
Darwin's lost fossils found down the back of a cupboard
Fossils collected by a young Charles Darwin have been discovered in a gloomy corner of a British Geological Survey vault. The treasure trove of fossilised wood, stone and vegetation includes samples that Darwin collected on the HMS Beagle journey during which he came up with his theory of evolution. Lost for 165 years, the …
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Tuesday 17th January 2012 12:40 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
Reminds me of a "scientific correctness survey"
Posted in Mini-AIR in response remarks from Alabama governor Fob James on evolution ("just a theory"):
Did human beings evolve from
ape-like creatures?
__Yes __No __Not in Alabama __Other (please specify)
Results can be found at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/futurework@dijkstra.uwaterloo.ca/msg01419.html
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Tuesday 17th January 2012 17:14 GMT Pascal Monett
"To find a treasure trove of lost Darwin specimens from the Beagle voyage is just extraordinary"
Yes, but to find them already stored and still waiting for analysis after over a century and a half is a darn shame.
Might be time to get a few interns to go through all storage areas and see what else needs to be "rediscovered".
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Tuesday 17th January 2012 17:57 GMT David 164
Even if every graduate in this field spent there entire lives going through every nook and cranny in UK warehouses and archives they would still not complete the task of cataloguing everything stored for many decades. Even the British Museum says it only got an extremely rough idea what it has in it archives and still finds un-recorded items regularly.
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Friday 20th January 2012 18:12 GMT Marshalltown
Contrarywise
In fact, that they were collected by Darwin while traveling on the Beagle is the single most interesting property they have at the moment. That fact alone makes them historically important. They also must have had some influence on the formation of his theory of speciation, which would add to their importance. There are likely to be several papers and books in the next few years by paleontologists, biologists and philosophers of science all attempting to link these to Darwin's conclusions in the Origin of Species.
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Thursday 19th January 2012 11:53 GMT Graham Wilson
Wonderful discovery but....
A wonderful discovery but I wonder if the information from this discovery is going to be made freely available and accessible to science and everyone.
In recent years, it's become commonplace for museums etc.--those having custodial possession of society's documents, records and objects--to only make information available through photographs, photocopies etc. made by the institution in question, thus copyright of information about objects in its possession is also invested with it and not in the public domain as it ought to be.
As the mad and unfair copyright laws currently stand, it means that this valuable information about Charles Darwin won't reach the public domain much before the 22nd Century.
Had these items never been lost then by now we'd not only have had many years of valuable analysis time but also the photographs and information about them would have been in the public domain for about 100 years. Correct: because of a quirk of fate, copyright of this information starts running from now!
Just another good reason to stop SOPA and reform unjust copyright law.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
