Re: Second Thoughts on Sue

[JManasco@aol.com]

>>with that 8 million. For vp, that a bloody fortune. And
it's all going to one single specimen.<< 

I'm not certain that the truckload of money used to purchase Sue can be
viewed as a zero-sum issue -- whereby the allocation of it in one direction
means it is denied to another.  Doesn't it represent an infusion that
otherwise would have been spent elsewhere -- these corporations' promotional
budgets for instance.  I'm very mindful that the "infusion" is bitter-sweet
at best.  And its "rescue" possibly a Pyrrhic victory as the marketplace
threatens to capture a wealth of specimens just as the Atchafalaya is
threatening to capture the Mississippi.

In the fall of 1991, I visited BHI and viewed Sue in the makeshift prep lab.
 This was a few months before the FBI came knocking.  While being awe-struck
by Sue, I was more moved by the presence of a beautiful Acrocanthosaurus
skull which was threatened by pyrite disease.  I'm originally from Oklahoma
and probably felt a little proprietary.  I keep wondering what's come of  the
acro and the many like it that are slipping out the backdoor while Sue claims
everyone's attention.