Palaeontologists have criticised an auction held today at Christie’s Paris which includes fossilised skeletons of prehistoric animals including a bear, a rhinoceros and a mammoth.
An article in Bloomberg quotes Michel Guiraud, curator at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, opposing the sale on the grounds that it encourages looting and unscientific excavations. Some of the fossils are said to come from Siberia, although information about their find circumstances is not available, and there is no way of knowing whether skeletons are intact or composite assemblages.
But that’s OK. According to Eric Mickeler, Christie’s scientific adviser for the sale, there’s no point in keeping excavated mammoths for science or museum collections because there is nothing left to discover.
“It’s alarming and dishonest to say every mammoth must be in a museum or an institution,” Mickeler said. “There are already plenty, and all that can be said or written about them has been.”
Which can be translated as: ”these bones have buggerall scientific value. They were discovered god knows where, and shipped to this fancy showroom so some rich bastard could buy them. Now can I please get on with making some money?”
UPDATE
Auction nets a mammoth Euro 2.5 million, with the mammoth (lot 84) fetching 312,000. The next most expensive items were lots 16 and 83, which both fetched 120,000.
Tags: antiquities sales, Christie's auction house, palaeontology
