I don’t remember exactly which dinosaurs I saw when I first visited Chicago’s Field Museum as a child, but I’ll never forget seeing the giant skeletons from the past. Since then, I have seen many other dinos in other fossil museums, and the wonder remains the same.
This issue’s cover story traces the soaring popularity of museum-like dinosaur fossil collections, with high-end auction houses like Christie’s selling off Tyrannosaurus Rex the skeletons stick out like pieces of art. As Earth and Sky writer Carolyn Gramling reports, Stan the T. rexA skeleton found on private land in South Dakota sold for an eye-popping $31.8 million in 2020, and in T. rex The skull went for $6.1 million last December.
Stan disappeared after being auctioned off. Last year it was revealed that the United Arab Emirates owned the Emirates and put Stan in a new natural history museum. The fossil trade is nothing new, but most museums cannot compete at these price points. And although many nations regulate fossil fuels, cubitals are abundant.
With each fossil that disappears from public opinion, science — and the public — loses. Scholars are afraid that new things may not be discovered unless they go to private individuals to investigate. With so few T. rex unearthed fossils, each specimen holds tremendous scientific value.
Fortunately for us dinophiles, they have museums T. rex skeletons available and in their collections. Sue’s campus houses the museum, whose $8.36 million purchase in 1997 was underwritten by colleges and academic institutions. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC is home to a T. rex It was discovered in Montana in 1988. Because the fossil was found on federal land, it avoided an auction block and is now in the unfortunate ring. Triceratops in the fossil hall recently renovated in the museum s.
In this issue we also explore another source of frustration in science: the depression of our limited understanding. The often debilitating disorder affects millions of people worldwide. But despite decades of effort, scientists still can’t describe how it works or what it does. The so-called “chemical imbalance” theory does not fully capture what is going on in the brain, let alone the influence of external factors such as race, gender and culture. How individuals experience depression also depends on where they live and how they experience the world around them.
Researchers not only better understand what is going on inside the brain, but also how internal and external factors are interconnected. One obstacle to moving science forward is that different researchers rely on different definitions of depression and different ways of assessing whether a person is depressed. As senior neuroscientist and author Laura Sanders notes, it’s like trying to figure out the science of temperature without thermometers.
It is an extraordinary challenge and one that researchers cannot solve in their lifetime. But I am grateful that so many pests find the roots of disease.
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