Is there a paucity of fossils ?

This topic was prompted by Message 284, which is reproduced below in full :

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Crashfrog writes:

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"Concealed", I suppose, in the display cases in museums, on public display. You know, those places you go when you want to learn something.

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I guess that explains why you haven't seen the fossils, huh?

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I live in a city with MANY world class museums.

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Everytime I visited one they displayed fake plaster cast fossils inserted into some preexisting narrative structure. The implication being obvious: The paucity of real fossils in existence does not allow for every museum to show them.

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Page 3, Milton:

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The glass cabinets at the British Museum of Natural History of Kensington are empty of any physical proof that evolution by natural selection has taken place and is established fact.

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My re-occurring point:

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So much based on so little, yet the purported lack of the same type of evidence for ancient Israel = the greatest double standard you will find anywhere.

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This message has been edited by WILLOWTREE, 10-26-2004 08:20 PM

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The statement I want to investigate is The implication being obvious: The paucity of real fossils in existence does not allow for every museum to show them.I was sufficiently intrigued by the idea that there aren't enough fossils around that I decided not to wait for Lindum and do a bit of digging to see if I could find - from some institutions that actually have fossil collections - what sort of numbers of fossils there actually are.Here are some examples I came up with by putting "fossil collection largest" (without the quotes) into Google :

• In 1995 Kansas University added some new fossils :
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  The collection includes more than 250,000 specimens, nine giant moving trucks full of fossil plants, mostly from Antarctica.
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  Consider this for a moment. This is a quarter of a million extra fossils being added to their collection. Oh, and it also states in the article that this in only the second largest collection of fossil plants in the world - the British Museum has the largest.
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• The Paleontological Research Institution houses all of Cornell's non-botanical fossils. This colletion
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  contains between 2 and 3 million specimens, making it the seventh largest fossil collection in the country
  So there are seven collections in the US alone with at least two million fossils in them. So there are at least fourteen million fossils in the US in just seven collections.
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• The Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology
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  has a rich collection of approximately 200,000 pieces of specimen,among which more than 150,000 are valuable type specimen
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• The National Museums Of Scotlands has a paltry collection of
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  around 22,600 specimens, about eighty per cent of which are from Scottish localities
  Then again, Scotland isn't that big a place
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• The Canadian Museum Of Nature says
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  Within our collections of 120,000 specimens, there are over 450 primary types.
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  Our Vertebrate Fossil Collection contains more than 50,000 specimens
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  Our Fossil Pollen Collection consists of 18,000 fossil pollen and spore specimens and modern reference specimens
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• And of course, the Natural History Museum. The linked page contains a table which breaks down the fossils they have by type. The total is given as
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  >7,877,600
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  So a feeble collection of nearly eight million fossils there.

If you want to look up others I chanced across this site. It is an attempt by the International Palaeontological Association to create an online database of fossil collections around the world.I contend there is not a paucity of fossils. Actually no, I claim to have established beyond doubt that there is not a paucity of fossils. There is no way that fourteen million fossils in just seven US collections, plus nearly eight million in the Natural History Museum could be described as a "paucity" - even if there were no other collections anywhere in the world.What there may be is a paucity of "exciting" fossils that the public will want to take a trip and (possibly) pay to see. Let's face it, Joe Public wants to see fierce predators (supersized if possible) and gigantic plant eaters. A few trilobites and other critters that are famous are nice too. I suspect most people aren't that much interested in plants, insects, arachnids etc. unless they are very big and/or very wierd looking compared to their modern equivalents. Things like pollen and seeds don't even get a look in.This means there is a major difference between what the public are shown/want to see in museum collections and what is actually available in collections. Although I'm no palaeontologist I would suggest that the value of a collection in terms of public display bears no relation to the value it has in terms of doing scientific research.Perhaps this is why WILLOWTREE holds the view he does - he is looking in the glass cases in the lobby but he needs to be looking in the storage cabinets in the labs at the back of the building.

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Confused ? You will be...

In which forum do you want this placed?

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How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950

I was hoping you'd pick one 'cos I wasn't sure where it should go !Looking at the fora descriptions I can't see any that really jump out as being appropriate so I would suggest Miscellaneous Topics in Creation/Evolution.

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Confused ? You will be...

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

The Field Museum alone estimates that their current collection is something around 3 Million samples while the San Diego Natural History Museum adds almost 2 Million more. And that is only two institutions.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

oh, i was waiting for this for a while.btw, for willowtree, my challenge still stands. show me a picture of or article about evidence of hebrews in egpyt/the exodus, and i'll show you a transitional hominid.if i recall correctly, the score is 3-0 in my favor.

Since Willowtree has to rely on "Milton says so" rather than relating his own experiences I doubt he has had a serious look in many museums.Fossils as such are so common that large numbers are sold on the open market for small sums. Of course they are mainly hard-shelled marine invertebrates although shark's teeth are also very common and even compltee fossils of small fish are reasonably common and not too expensive.However there are good reasons why the more impressive fossils are often represented by casts.1) Really good fossils - such as near complete skeletons - ARE rare. And they can't be on display at every museum at once - hnce the plaster cast of the diplodocus at the Natural History Museum in London.2) Musuems are places of learning, as well as public exhibitions. Many important specimens are kept back for scientific research and are not on public display. The London specimen of archaeopteryx is rarely on display (although I an happy to say that I have seen it).

The originals are f'ing heavy!It is easier ans safer to mount something made of fibreglass.The originals are then available for study without any damage done to them to drill holes etc.

I wondered about including something similar in the OP but I wasn't sure enough (trying to limit the opportunities for diversions based on my mistakes !). I suspect there is also an issue of value associated with that rarity - I can imagine some of the reasonably sized specimens such as archaeopteryx being a tempting target for thieves.Sneaking out with the diplodocus under your coat might be a bit trickier

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Confused ? You will be...

Glad to be of service, but would you care to enlighten me on why ?

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Confused ? You will be...

First, in the old days actual fossils were used to make reconstructions of the skeletons.Doing this damages the fossils because you have to drill and tap connecting mechanisms into them. If you get it "wrong" (and there are several historical examples of this) then you have to do it again causing more damage.The casts allow the structure to be assembled that is the best fit for the fossils they are cast from according to the knowledge available at the time, while allowing the actual specimens to be used by scientists to further their knowledge as well as to conduct deeper studies (cat scans etc) without having to remove them from some exhibit somewhere. If a new "reconsruction" is proposed then it can be assembled from new cast elements to test the concept -- this also has been done.(If there is a cast Willowtree only needs to ask what it was cast from in order to answer his implied question on whether the actual fossil ever existed).Secondly, another place that is closer to this claim is where a set of fossils for one specimen is incomplete, and here it is common to make "mirror" versions of bones where one side is present but the other side is not in order to make the whole more complete (even on skulls), and this is fully supported by the known symetries of all living things.Thirdly, some exhibits show "assembled" skeletons that combine samples from a couple of sets of actual fossils: this can only be done when there is sufficient overlap between the fossils to show that they are properly scaled for any individual size differences and that all attaching points are covered within one set or the other.The purpose of these exhibits is to show as complete a picture of the past as is currently known in a manner that can be easily understood by the lay public, and thus it is NOT strict science (no science is based on the exhibits). complaining about the actual accuracy of these exibits is like complaining that a movie poster does not really show what is in the movie.Think about this as if 3 different jigsaw puzzles were made from the same picture, printed to 3 different sizes and cut 3 different ways, then throw away half of each puzzle after the pieces have been jumbled, and then reconstruct what the original picture was. Likely you will still have some spots missing, but you will have a pretty good idea of what the picture was.Finally, any rare and valuable fossls will also be cast and have the casts shown in their place in order to provide security from theft and damage.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Not only are the museums full of fossils, but there are a lot of mighty fine fossils in private hands.

because it was a terrible off-shoot argument in another thread, and i wasn't succesfully demonstrating to willowtree that "few," "a few," and "almost nothing" are very very different.statistically, we don't have a lot of fossils. out of the possibilities for fossils, relatively few organisms become fossils. that DOES not mean the same as "we only have a few transitional fossils" which is a lie. and even that's better than "we have nothing to show the hebrews ever lived in egypt as a group"it seemed i broke it down TOO far, and was going fossil by fossil. i show him one, he shows me one. the challenge still stands, of course. but he has yet to show me ANY evidence for hebrews in egypt at all, and i've already shown him the skulls of at least 3 hominids.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 10-29-2004 01:47 AM

i know at least one person with a private collection of fossils:me.i don't have anything special, of course. but i do know someone who managed to get his hands on 6 tarbosaur eggs all with fossilized embryos. that sort of thing is pretty rare.