Archaeoraptor

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"Archaeoraptor" is the generic name assigned to a fossil described in an article published in National Geographic magazine as a "missing link" between birds and theropod dinosaurs. This fossil led to a scandal when it proved to be a forgery upon actual scientific study. The forgery was constructed from rearranged pieces of real fossils. Zhou et al. found that the head and upper body actually belong to a specimen of the primitive fossil bird Yanornis.^[1] Rowe et al. found that the tail belongs to a small dromaeosaur.^[2] The legs and feet belong to an as yet unknown animal.^[3] Despite this forgery, many true examples of feathered dinosaurs have been found and demonstrate the evolutionary connection between birds and other theropods.

[edit] Scandal

"Archaeoraptor" was unveiled at a press conference held by National Geographic magazine in October of 1999. It was announced then that an agreement to return the fossil to China had been negotiated. In November of 1999 National Geographic featured the fossil in an article written by art editor Christopher Sloan. The article discussed feathered dinosaurs and the origin of birds, and informally named the fossil Archaeoraptor liaoningensis.^[4]

This drew immediate criticism from Storrs L. Olson, Curator of Birds at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Writing in Backbone, the newsletter of his museum, he denounced the publication of a scientific name in a popular journal, without peer review, as a "nightmare".^[5]

On February 3, 2000, National Geographic issued a press release stating that the fossil could be a composite, and that an internal investigation had begun. In that same month Bill Allen, National Geographic editor, told Nature that he was "furious" to learn that the fossil might have been faked. In the March issue, in the forum section, a letter from Dr. Xu Xing pointed out that the tail section probably did not match the upper body. In October of 2000 National Geographic published the results of their investigation, in an article written by investigative journalist Lewis M. Simmons. They concluded that the fossil was a composite and that virtually everyone involved in the project had made some mistakes.^[6]

[edit] Chronology

This article from the November 1999 issue of National Geographic was retracted after the fossil "Archaeoraptor liaoningensis" was shown to be fraudulent.

According to National Geographic's report, the story of "Archaeoraptor" apparently begins in 1997 in Xiasanjiazi, China, where farmers routinely dug in the shale pits with a picks and sold fossils to dealers for a few dollars. This is an illegal practice, but it was common then. In this case one farmer found a rare fossil of a toothed bird, complete with feather impressions. The fossil broke into pieces during collection. Nearby, in the same pit, he found pieces including a feathered tail and legs. He cemented several of these pieces together in a manner that he believed was correct, but he must have known that it would make a more complete-looking and, thus, more expensive fossil. It was sold to an anonymous dealer and smuggled to the United States. According to authorities in Beijing, no fossils may leave China legally.^[6]

By the fall 1998 annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, held in Utah, rumors were circulating about a striking fossil of a primitive bird that was in private hands. This fossil was presented by an anonymous dealer at a gem show in Tucson, Arizona. The Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah, purchased it in February of 1999. The museum is run by Stephen A. Czerkas and his wife, Sylvia Czerkas. Mr. Czerkas does not hold a university degree, but he is a dinosaur enthusiast and artist. He arranged for patrons of his museum, including trustee Dale Slade, to provide $80,000 for the purchase of the fossil, in order to study it scientifically and prevent it from disappearing into an anonymous private collection.

The Czerkases contacted paleontologist Phil Currie, who contacted the National Geographic Society. Currie agreed to study the fossil on condition that it was eventually returned to China. The National Geographic Society intended to get the fossil formally published in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature, and then follow up immediately with a press conference and an issue of National Geographic. Editor Bill Allen asked that all members of the project keep the fossil secret, so that the magazine would have a scoop on the story.

Slade and the Czerkases intended the fossil to be the "crown jewel" of the Dinosaur Museum, and planned to keep it on display there for five years. Sloan says that he flew to Utah in the spring of 1999 to convince Stephen Czerkas to return the fossil to China immediately after publication, or he would not write about it for National Geographic and Currie would not work on it. Czerkas then agreed.^[5]

Currie then contacted the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, and National Geographic flew the IVPP's Xu Xing to Utah to be part of the "Archaeoraptor" team.^[6]

During the initial examination of the fossil on March 6, 1999, it had already become 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. On August 2, 1999, Currie and the Czerkases brought the fossil to the University of Texas (Austin) High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility and its founder, Dr. Timothy Rowe, to make CT scans. Rowe determined that the scans indicated that the bottom fragments were not part of the larger fossil, but the Czerkases rejected his conclusions and neither side seems to have clearly communicated the problem to Currie.

Currie then sent his preparator, Kevin Aulenback, to the Dinosaur Museum in Blanding to prepare the fossil for better study. Aulenback concluded that the fossil was a composite, but the Czerkases angrily denied this and Aulenbeck only reported this to Currie. Currie did not inform National Geographic of these problems.^[7]

On August 13, 1999, the team submitted a manuscript titled "A New Toothed Bird With a Dromaeosaur-like Tail" under the names of Stephen Czerkas, Currie, Rowe, and Xu, to the journal Nature in London. Currie prevailed in mentioning in the paper that the legs were part and counterpart, meaning that the fossil must have been composited.

On August 20 Nature rejected the paper, indicating to the Czerkases that National Geographic had refused to delay publication, leaving too little time for peer review. The authors then submitted the paper to Science, which sent it out for peer review. Two reviewers informed Science that "the specimen was smuggled out of China and illegally purchased" and that the fossil had been "doctored" in China "to enhance its value." Science then rejected the paper. According to Sloan, the Czerkases did not inform National Geographic about the details of the two rejections.^[5]

By now the November issue of National Geographic was already in preparation for printing, but "Archaeoraptor" was never published in any journal.

National Geographic went ahead and published without peer review.^[8] 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—a National Geographic art editor. Sloan described it as a missing link that helped elucidate the connection between 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^[9]) in anticipation of being able to publish a peer-reviewed description at some point in the future.

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" and protesting the "prevailing dogma that birds evolved from dinosaurs". Olson complained 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."^[10] The last claim turned out to be wrong because of the disclaimer.

On December 20 Xu Xing sent e-mails to the authors and Sloan, announcing that the fossil was a fake. In October (after having been informed by Currie of the problems), Xu noticed that the tail of "Archaeoraptor" strongly resembled an unnamed maniraptoran dinosaur that he was studying — later to be named Microraptor zhaoianus.^[11] He returned to China and traveled to Liaoning Province where he inspected the fossil site and contacted a number of fossil dealers. He eventually found a fairly complete fossil of a tiny dromaeosaur, and the tail of this new fossil corresponded so exactly to the tail on the "Archaeoraptor" fossil that it had to be the counterslab -- it even had two matching yellow oxide stains.^[6]

On February 3, 2000, The National Geographic News issued a press release stating that the "Archaeoraptor" fossil might be a composite, and that an internal investigation had begun. In the March issue of National Geographic, Xu's letter ran in the Forum section of the magazine, and Bill Allen had Xu change the word "fake" to "composite".^[12]

On April 4, 2000, Stephen Czerkas told a group of paleontologists in Washington that he and Sylvia had made an "an idiot, bone-stupid mistake". Currie, Allen, Sloan, all expressed regret. Rowe felt vindicated, claiming the affair as evidence that his scans were correct. Rowe published a Brief Communication in Nature in 2001 describing his findings.^[6][13]

In June, 2000 the fossil was returned to China.^[14] In the October 2000 issue, National Geographic published the results of their investigation.

[edit] Ongoing confusion

The fossils involved in the "Archaeoraptor" scandal have led to ongoing confusion over taxon names.

Zhou et al. (2002) examined the upper body of the "Archaeoraptor" fossil and reported that it belonged to the previously-named genus Yanornis.^[1]

[edit] Dinosaur Museum Journal

In 2002 the Czerkases published a volume through their Dinosaur Museum titled Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight. In this journal they described and named several species. Of the six species named in the book, five are disputed.

Despite the work of Zhou et al. (2002), Czerkas and co-author Xu Xing described the upper portion of the Archeoraptor fossil as a new bird genus, Archaeovolans, in the Dinosaur Museum Journal. The article does include the caveat that it might actually be a specimen of Yanornis.^[15] Thus, this same fossil specimen has been named "Archaeoraptor", Archeovolans, and Yanornis, in different places.

Across the monographs in the Dinosaur Museum Journal, Stephen Czerkas built a case for his controversial view that maniraptoran dinosaurs are secondarily flightless birds. In so doing, he criticized prominent paleontologists. In the text on Cryptovolans, Czerkas accused Dr. Mark Norell of misinterpreting the fossil BPM 1 3-13 as having long leg feathers due to the "blinding influences of preconceived ideas".^[15] In fact, though, Norell's interpretation was correct, and Czerkas added leg feathers to his own reconstruction of the fossil in the art that promotes the traveling exhibit.

Two other taxa that Czerkas and his co-authors named were later treated as junior synonyms by other authors. Czerkas' Cryptovolans was treated as Microraptor,^[16] and his Scansoriopteryx was treated as Epidendrosaurus.^[17][16] Czerkas described Omnivoropteryx, noting that it was similar to Sapeornis. Later specimens of Sapeornis with skulls demonstrated that the two were probably synonymous.^[18]

Another taxon that Czerkas assigned to the pterosauria and named Utahdactylus was reviewed by Dr. Chris Bennett. Bennett found multiple misidentifications of bones and inconsistencies between Czerkas' diagrams and the actual fossils. Bennett found the specimen to be an indeterminate diapsid and criticized the previous authors for publishing a species name when no diagnostic characters below the class level could be verified. He made Utahdactylus a nomen dubium.^[19]

[edit] Traveling exhibit

The "Archaeoraptor" scandal has ramifications that are ongoing. In 2001 Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas compiled a traveling exhibit containing 34 other Chinese fossils. The show is titled Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight. The San Diego Natural History Museum paid a set fee to the Dinosaur Museum to display this show in 2004. When the show opened, Dr.Ji Qiang told reporters from Nature that about a dozen of the fossils had left China illegally. Ji arranged with the Czerkases to assign accession numbers to three of the most valuable specimens, thus formally adding them to the collection of Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing, although they remain in the possession of the Czerkases. Stephen Czerkas denied Ji's assertion that the fossils were illegal. Sylvia Czerkas told Nature magazine that she had worked out an agreement with officials of Liaoning Province in 2001 to borrow the fossils, and that they were to be repatriated in 2007. Through March 2009, however, the show is scheduled for the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science in California. According to Nature, the Czerkases refused requests to make the officials from Liaoning available for interview.^[20]

Many scientists consider it unethical to work on fossils if there is any chance that they have been smuggled, and many disregard privately owned fossils altogether.^[21] Some professionals feel that private collectors put fossils in private hands where science may not be able to access or study them. Some believe that private collectors may damage important fossils, subject them to forgery, and obscure their origins or evidence about their ages. Illegal dealers have also participated in, and may encourage, governmental corruption. Another philosophy argues that if scientists could bend their ethics and agree to publish on important private fossils, this would encourage private holders to make them available for study.^[21]

[edit] Taxonomic history

Cast of the holotype specimen of Microraptor gui

The taxonomic issues raised by this controversial history are ongoing. 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.^[22] 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.^[23]

Most paleontologists are unwilling to use the name "Archaeoraptor" regardless of the precise 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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Creationism

Ramifications of the scandal have led to skeptics of the evolution theory to use "Archaeoraptor" as an argument against evolution. The scandal is sometimes used by creationists like Kent Hovind to cast doubt on the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs.^[24] Many creationists insist that no missing links between birds and dinosaurs have been found, and commonly point to "Archaeoraptor" as evidence of misconduct performed to support the evolutionary theory.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Dinosaurs Portal

• Helen Briggs, 'Piltdown' bird fake explained, from March 29, 2001, BBC News Online.
• Hillary Mayell, Dino Hoax Was Mainly Made of Ancient Bird, Study Says, from the November 20, 2002 National Geographic News.
• Simons, Lewis M., 2000. Archaeoraptor fossil trail. National Geographic 198(4) (October): 128–132.
• Reed, Christina. "Fossil Faux Pas" Geotimes, March 2000.