Word: paleontologist
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...what role would volcanoes have had to play in all this? A big one, argues Gerta Keller, a Princeton University paleontologist, who recently made her case at a meeting of the Geological Society of America. Geologists have known for centuries that a swath of central India was buried by a series of eruptions at around the time of the dinosaurs' demise. The remains of the flows, known as the Deccan Traps, still cover some 193,000 sq. mi. (500,000 sq km). The eruptions would have poured carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide into the air, triggering runaway global warming...
...Here in Chaoyang, an impoverished northeastern Chinese city surrounded by cornfields where farmers still use horse-drawn plows, prehistoric bones have jump-started the economy in a way no free-trade zone or joint venture could have done. The region shot to fame in the mid-1990s when paleontologists began discovering feathered dinosaurs and other well-preserved fossils. They eventually logged at least 500 new species in the area. Good news for scientists, but even better news for an entire generation of farmers, dealers, shop owners, and even local officials who profit from a flourishing underground trade in priceless fossils...
...Even scientists are not above turning to Chaoyang's markets in the interests of science. Xu Xing, a paleontologist who has discovered more dinosaur species than anyone in history, says several of his finds came from such dealers. "I don't feel good when I buy fossils, so I'm trying to step away from this market," he says. Although sales of dinosaurs are strictly illegal, local officials tend to look the other way. "The middlemen and authorities are in bed together," says Zhang Wanlian, a retired reporter for the Chaoyang Daily, who has investigated the local fossil trade...
...that Americans who come to see Lucy in Houston or on tour might come to see Ethiopia too. But scientists say that argument is wrongheaded. "People will go to Ethiopia to see Lucy, but why should they travel to Ethiopia if Lucy has come to their local museum?" says paleontologist Richard Leakey. "Sending Lucy or any other original fossil to America will bring status to second-level U.S. museums. It will do nothing for Ethiopian tourism or for science. It sets a terrible precedent. It is exploitation of the worst kind...
...ultimate goal, say critics, then Lucy ought not leave her homeland; her grand North American tour will only serve to put the brakes on research. "Scientists who use Lucy for comparative studies will definitely be affected negatively by [her] absence, and I am one of them," says Ethiopian paleontologist Zeresenay Alemseged of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "Six years is really too long!" Without "a compelling national interest" and "unique and exceptional benefits," Lucy - and, indeed, all similarly rare and valuable objects - should stay home, Alemseged says. If she absolutely has to travel, he adds...