|
|
Change Your Life! |
Lizard fossil and Apollo 11 handle at auction |
|
News
|
|
|
August 29, 2000
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A 200 million-year-old fossil of a winged lizard sold for dlrs 167,000 in the same controversial auction that put a silver handle from the American spacecraft Apollo 11 in the hands of an unknown bidder for dlrs 34,500. Both items are considered one of a kind, and their auction Sunday angered experts in both fields. NASA is investigating whether the spacecraft's handle should have reached Butterfields' auction block at all. And paleontologists concerned about the commercialization of important finds were angry that the fossil was sold on rather than preserved in a museum's collection. The fossil, a 7-inch (an 18-centimeter) lizard with a 10-inch (25-centimeter) wingspan called Icarosaurus siefkeri, is the oldest airborne vertebrate known to scientists. The fossil proved to scientists that vertebrates attempted flight 10 million years earlier than anyone had suspected. It had been studied for more than 30 years at the American Museum of Natural History, and there was hope Sunday that it would be returned. The unidentified man who purchased it Sunday called himself a friend of the museum who wished to see it back in the museum's care. Alfred Siekfer discovered the fossil when he was 17 years old, but now in failing health at 56, he decide to sell it for the quick cash. Mark Goodwin, a vertebrate paleontologist and principal scientist at the Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley, called the sale of the fossil a "highly unethical event that will only increase commercialization and encourage the theft of fossils from museums." The Apollo 11 handle had been fixed to the outside of the command module that guided astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into the moon's orbit in 1969. It was sold by Charles Barnes, a former radiation safety officer at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center who performed tests on it in the 1970s. Barnes kept the handle in a safe after leaving NASA and performed periodic tests on it for the administration to test for radiation leakage. The Office of Inspector General for NASA announced earlier this month that it would investigate plans by Butterfields to sell an 18.5 inch (a 47 centimeter) long silver handle. By the time the auction took place, a deal of sorts had been struck. "Because the NASA inquiry is continuing there is an additional conditional of sale that should NASA decide that the item should be returned to them, we will certainly return funds to the buyer," said Butterfields spokesman Levi Morgan. Other items sold at the simultaneous natural history and science auctions from Butterfields' San Francisco and Los Angeles offices included a six-inch (15-centimeter) iron meteorite which brought dlrs 51,750 and a five-million-year-old giant saber-toothed tiger skull which sold for dlrs 31,625. --- On the Net: http://www.butterfields.com
|