Archaeoraptor

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Archaeoraptor was a fossil believed to be a theropod dinosaur closely related to the ancestors of birds, but which proved to be a forgery.

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[edit] History

This article from the November 1999 issue of National Geographic was retracted after the purported type fossil for Archaeoraptor liaoningensis was shown to be fraudulent.
This article from the November 1999 issue of National Geographic was retracted after the purported type fossil for Archaeoraptor liaoningensis was shown to be fraudulent.

The purported fossil of "Archaeoraptor" was found in 1998 at a gem show in Tucson, Arizona. It had been found in July 1997 in the Liaoning Province of China, sold on the black market and smuggled out of China and into the United States. Stephen Czerkas, owner of the Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah, purchased it for $80,000 and contacted paleontologist Phil Currie and the National Geographic Society. Currie agreed to study the fossil on condition that it was eventually returned to China. The society intended to announce the find to the larger public, immediately after a publication in Nature. During the first investigation it already became clear to Currie that the left and right leg mirrored each other perfectly and that the fossil had been completed by using both slab and counterslab. He then sent it to Timothy Rowe in Austin to make CAT scans. These indicated that the bottom fragments were not part of the larger fossil. This was confirmed through a close study by Currie's preparator, Kevin Aulenback. Currie did not inform National Geographic of these problems.[1]

The fossil was unveiled in a press conference on October 15, 1999, and the November 1999 National Geographic Magazine contained an article by Christopher P. Sloan (National Geographic's art editor). Sloan described it as a missing link that would connect dinosaurs and birds. The original fossil was put on display at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC, pending return to China. In the article Sloan used the name Archaeoraptor liaoningensis but with a disclaimer (so that it would not count as a nomenclatural act for the purposes of scientific classification[2]) in anticipation of being able to publish a peer-reviewed description simultaneously in Nature. However, Nature and Science both rejected the paper, and National Geographic went ahead and published without peer review.[3]

After the November National Geographic came out, Storrs L. Olson, curator of birds in the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution published an open letter on 1 November 1999, pointing out that "the specimen in question is known to have been illegally exported"; protesting the "prevailing dogma that birds evolved from dinosaurs", and complaining that Sloan, a journalist, had usurped the process of scientific nomenclature by publishing a name first in the popular press: "This is the worst nightmare of many zoologists—that their chance to name a new organism will be inadvertently scooped by some witless journalist."[4] (This last claim turned out to be wrong because of the disclaimer)

[edit] Uncovering the fake

The "Archaeoraptor" specimen was returned by the Czerkases to China. Xu Xing, a member of Beijing's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology had already noticed in October after having been informed by Currie of the problems during a visit to the USA, that the tail of "Archaeoraptor" strongly resembled an unnamed Maniraptoran dinosaur — later to be named Microraptor zhaoianus — that he was studying, but the front half did not match. He returned to China and traveled to Liaoning Province where he inspected the fossil site. His suspicions that the dinosaur-like tail of the fossil did not belong to the same species were confirmed. In December he contacted a number of fossil dealers and eventually found the fossilized body that corresponded to the tail on the "Archaeoraptor" fossil. He informed the National Geographic Society, and CT scans funded by the society confirmed his suspicions. The society still believed the fossil to be important, however.

By January 2000 the fossil had proven to be fraudulent and National Geographic retracted their article and promised an investigation. In the October 2000 issue, the magazine published a retraction and an article about the case. A Chinese farmer had created the "Archaeoraptor" fossil by gluing two fossils together, one of which was a Microraptor, the other one was a fossil bird later named Archaeovolans. On November 21, 2002, a paper in Nature found that Archaeovolans was the the same species as the previously-named avialan species Yanornis martini, so the front end of the fossil now bears this name.[5]

[edit] Taxonomic history

Meanwhile, in April 2000 Olson published an article in Backbone, the newsletter of the National Museum of Natural History. In this article he justified his views on the evolution of birds, but also named and described the species Archaeoraptor liaoningensis by designating the tail of the original fraudulent specimen as the type specimen.[6] This action prevented the tainted name "Archaeoraptor" from entering the paleornithological literature by attaching it to the part of the chimeric specimen which was unlikely to be classified under Aves, rather than the portion which was later shown to represent a true bird species. Olson's paper was published several months before Xu, Zhou and Wang published their description of Microraptor zhaoianus in Nature.[7]

So to review the taxonomic history:

  • November 1999: Sloan uses Archaeoraptor liaoningensis for the chimera, but because of the disclaimer the name has no standing in taxonomy and can be used in a valid description.
  • April 2000: Olson publishes Archaeoraptor liaoningensis with description and reference to a type specimen. On a straightforward interpretation, this name is valid. However, there is some doubt. Olson seems to have believed that A. liaoningensis Sloan, 1999 was valid (as his 1 November 1999 open letter makes clear) and that he was merely acting as first reviser and selecting a lectotype from among the syntypes described by Sloan. On this interpretation, Olson failed to name a new species.
  • December 2000: Xu et al. publish Microraptor zhaoianus designating the same type specimen as Olson — the tail from the fake together with the body of the counterslab. If A. liaoningensis Olson, 2000 is valid then this makes their name a junior objective synonym.

Most paleontologists are unwilling to use the name "Archaeoraptor" regardless of the precise legal status of the name, first, because that name is strongly associated with the fraud and the National Geographic scandal; and second, because they view Olson's use of the name as attempted nomenclatural sabotage. Thus, the name Microraptor zhaoianus Xu et al., 2000 has almost universal currency for the species that supplied the tail to the "Archaeoraptor" fake.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Chambers, Paul, 2002, Bones of Contention.
  2. ^ Rule 8b of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, 3rd edition.
  3. ^ Sloan, Christopher P. (November 1999). "Feathers for T. rex?". National Geographic 196 (5): 98-107. 
  4. ^ Storrs L. Olson, 1999. Two open letters from Storrs Olson (LONG)
  5. ^ Zhonghe Zhou, Julia A. Clarke and Fucheng Zhang (21 November 2002). "Archaeoraptor's better half". Nature 420: 253–344. DOI:10.1038/420285a. 
  6. ^ Storrs L. Olson, 2000. Countdown to Piltdown at National Geographic: the rise and fall of Archaeoraptor. Backbone, newsletter of the Department of Vertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, 13(2) (April): 1–3.
  7. ^ Xu Xing, Zhonghe Zhou and Xiaolin Wang (7 December 2000). "The smallest known non-avian theropod dinosaur". Nature 408: 705-708. DOI:10.1038/35047056. 

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