BACKGROUND:  There's this nutball who digs things out of his back
 yard and sends the stuff he finds to the Smithsonian, labeling
 them with scientific names, insisting that they are actual
 archaeological finds.  The letter below as written by one of
 the Smithsonian curators after the guy sent in a Barbie doll
 head, claiming it was a human fossil.
      
 Dear Sir:
      
      Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled
 "211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull."
 We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination and
 we regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it
 represents "conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in
 Hennepin County two million years ago."  Rather, it appears that
 what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety
 one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the
 "Malibu Barbie".
 
 It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the
 analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those
 of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe
 to come to contradiction with your findings.  However, we do feel
 that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which
 might have tipped you off to it's modern origin:
      
  1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are
      typically fossilized bone.
      
  2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic
     centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest
     identified proto-hominids.
      
  3. The dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more consistent with
     the common domesticated dog than it is with the "ravenous man-eating
     Pliocene clams" you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.
     This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses
     you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the
     evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it.
      
     Without going into too much detail, let us say that:
      
     A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a
        dog has chewed on.
      
     B. Clams don't have teeth.
      
 It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your
 request to have the specimen carbon dated.  This is partially due to
 the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly
 due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent
 geologic record.  To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls
 were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to
 produce wildly inaccurate results.
 
 Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National
 Science Foundation's Phylogeny Department with the concept of
 assigning your specimen the scientific name "Australopithecus spiff-arino."
 Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the
 acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted
 down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't
 really sound like it might be Latin.
      
 However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating
 specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil,
 it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of
 work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly.  You should know
 that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office
 for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to
 the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you
 will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered
 in your back yard.  We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's
 capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are
 pressing the Director to pay for it.  We are particularly interested
 in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the
 "trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix"
 that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently
 discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears
 Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.
      
                                    Yours in Science, 
      
                                    Tom Snooselfox
                                    Curator, Antiquities 
 
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  þ TLX 4.10 þ I refuse a battle of wits with an unarmed person!

Wil Stark, wstark04 (at) pobox _dot_com

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