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Sidetracked: the struggle for BC’s fossils by Vivien Lougheed (Creekstone Press $21)
Most people will admit to a fascination with dinosaurs. They can understand the thrill of stumbling across skeletal remains preserved in rock or being the first to follow the ghostly tracks of some ancient creature since the day it squelched across a muddy shoreline millions of years before.
As Vivien Lougheed makes clear in Sidetracked: The Struggle for BC's Fossils, paleontology owes a great deal more to amateur enthusiasts than most other branches of science, for they are the ones who often make the discoveries.
But who should govern control of fossils? How quickly must amateurs cede ground and findings to experts?
"Paleontology,"; according to Stephen Jay Gould at the outset of Sidetracked, "though imbued with the usual swirling debate so characteristic of all interesting science, is a relatively friendly profession.";
True enough. And there are lots of examples of cooperation and even altruism in Sidetracked, but "swirling debate"; is an understatement to describe the tug of war over the Monroe Dinosaur Trackway in Kakwa Provincial Park, 44 miles north of McBride.
That conflict is at the heart of Lougheed's closely researched account of the discovery and ensuing battles over the Kakwa trackway-first discovered by Bryan Monroe and Garnet Fraser on a hunting expedition in 2000.
The first chapters whet the
reader's appetite by recounting the discovery by amateurs-two of them small boys-of a number of fossilized remains, mainly in north-eastern BC.
Lougheed establishes the importance of the vertebrate fossil record in the area, as well as the fragility of some of the finds, including another trackway which simply collapsed and disappeared before it could be documented and studied.
Like amateur enthusiasts, readers will find themselves confronted by the maze of regulation and professional practice governing the extraction, study and disposition of fossils.
Having made this background clear, Lougheed returns to the story of the Kakwa trackway.
This is a saga of hope and frustration, of compromise offered and either ignored or obstructed, of promises made and broken, of the politics of grants and municipal ambition, of academic turf wars and the mighty clash of egos.
These conflicts culminate with an illicit field trip made by Fraser in 2005, born of frustration, after which all casts and tracings made were confiscated.
With scrupulous fairness and objectivity, Vivien Lougheed has written a gripping cautionary tale about human mismanagement.
Sidetracked raises important questions about the roles of the amateur and the professional, about acknowledgement, about training of para-professionals, and the responsibilities of government.
It explains the need for consistent definition and legislation, and timely protection of fragile remains from the elements and mercantile interests.
Without clearly defined legislation, amateurs, who may or may not have paleontological expertise, and who may want nothing more than recognition of their part in the find or some minor role in its extraction, will continue to come up against professionals with their own concerns, often legitimate, but sometimes venal, and a bureaucracy that by its very nature is inflexible, confusing and glacially slow.
As Lougheed makes clear, science-the pursuit of knowledge-is all too easily "sidetracked"; by human frailties.
978-0-9783195-5-7
Margaret Thompson has written numerous non-fiction books, most recently Adrift On The Ark.
[BCBW 2011]
As Vivien Lougheed makes clear in Sidetracked: The Struggle for BC's Fossils, paleontology owes a great deal more to amateur enthusiasts than most other branches of science, for they are the ones who often make the discoveries.
But who should govern control of fossils? How quickly must amateurs cede ground and findings to experts?
"Paleontology,"; according to Stephen Jay Gould at the outset of Sidetracked, "though imbued with the usual swirling debate so characteristic of all interesting science, is a relatively friendly profession.";
True enough. And there are lots of examples of cooperation and even altruism in Sidetracked, but "swirling debate"; is an understatement to describe the tug of war over the Monroe Dinosaur Trackway in Kakwa Provincial Park, 44 miles north of McBride.
That conflict is at the heart of Lougheed's closely researched account of the discovery and ensuing battles over the Kakwa trackway-first discovered by Bryan Monroe and Garnet Fraser on a hunting expedition in 2000.
The first chapters whet the
reader's appetite by recounting the discovery by amateurs-two of them small boys-of a number of fossilized remains, mainly in north-eastern BC.
Lougheed establishes the importance of the vertebrate fossil record in the area, as well as the fragility of some of the finds, including another trackway which simply collapsed and disappeared before it could be documented and studied.
Like amateur enthusiasts, readers will find themselves confronted by the maze of regulation and professional practice governing the extraction, study and disposition of fossils.
Having made this background clear, Lougheed returns to the story of the Kakwa trackway.
This is a saga of hope and frustration, of compromise offered and either ignored or obstructed, of promises made and broken, of the politics of grants and municipal ambition, of academic turf wars and the mighty clash of egos.
These conflicts culminate with an illicit field trip made by Fraser in 2005, born of frustration, after which all casts and tracings made were confiscated.
With scrupulous fairness and objectivity, Vivien Lougheed has written a gripping cautionary tale about human mismanagement.
Sidetracked raises important questions about the roles of the amateur and the professional, about acknowledgement, about training of para-professionals, and the responsibilities of government.
It explains the need for consistent definition and legislation, and timely protection of fragile remains from the elements and mercantile interests.
Without clearly defined legislation, amateurs, who may or may not have paleontological expertise, and who may want nothing more than recognition of their part in the find or some minor role in its extraction, will continue to come up against professionals with their own concerns, often legitimate, but sometimes venal, and a bureaucracy that by its very nature is inflexible, confusing and glacially slow.
As Lougheed makes clear, science-the pursuit of knowledge-is all too easily "sidetracked"; by human frailties.
978-0-9783195-5-7
Margaret Thompson has written numerous non-fiction books, most recently Adrift On The Ark.
[BCBW 2011]
Submitted on November 9, 2011 in By David.
