October 1, 2002

10:01 AM

This Thursday, the Canadian Museum of Nature opens an exhibit of Asian dinosaur skeletons from the Russian Paleontological Institute. Putting Russian dinosaur collections on tour reportedly raises funds for cash-strapped scientific institutions back home, but others allege that Russia's own museums are the poorer for it, and that the money -- and fossils -- may be going astray.
posted by mcwetboy (3 comments total)

Great post, mcwetboy. The last link is truly distressing, though of course not surprising -- what's surprising is that every single thing of value hasn't already disappeared from Russia. Sad, sad.

(Frivolous by comparison, but -- isn't it odd that the Paleontological Institute site has a picture of St. Basil's rather than their own building?)
posted by languagehat at 1:04 PM on October 1, 2002

Wow, that last link from the Globe and Mail is very good. I can't believe the puff piece before it, written 8 months later, doesn't even *mention* the corruption and missing fossils.

An even greater worry is the growing number of gaps in the backroom storage cabinets of the Moscow Paleontological Institute, where a series of mysterious thefts has triggered allegations of insider corruption.

The evidence in the last link confirms the allegations pretty damn well, I think. This is a great post, mcwetboy, thanks. More evidence that the number of comments in a thread often has nothing to do with the quality of a post.
posted by mediareport at 1:04 PM on October 1, 2002

That puff piece is actually what triggered this post. Reading it reminded me that I had read the G&M article some months before, though I didn't remember that I had read it there, and then it was off to Google to find it and flesh out the rest.
posted by mcwetboy at 1:10 PM on October 1, 2002