Re: Biggest Bloopers in Vert Paleo?

["Robert G. Tuck Jr." <tuckr@ddi.digital.net>]

On Fri, 19 May 1995, Stan Friesen wrote:

> I do not know about the biggest bloopers, but I do know of one or two
errors that *sound* silly, even if they are not really that bad. For
instance, a fossil pig's tooth was once misidentified as a fossil hominid. 
But this is not as bad as it sounds: pigs and humans have very similar
diets, and thus have convergently similar teeth.  Thus the error is very
understandable. 

Yeah . . . but "_Heseperopithecus_," or "Nebraska Man," caused great
embarrassment at the time. See: Milner, Richard, _The Encyclopedia of
Evolution_, Foreword by Stephen Jay Gould, Facts on File, New York, 1990,
pages 322 - 323. 


- Tuck -