Heartbreak came in three acts at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City this summer: animal, vegetable, and mineral. It was Identification Day and museum-goers lugged their scientific treasures triple-wrapped in newspaper, towels, and Hefty garbage bags and tucked inside rolling suitcases, duffels, Coleman coolers, and zippered pants pockets. Local experts waited to receive them with friendly smiles and the cruelties of taxonomy.
Dominick Russo strode in with a trove of fossils that he described as the femur of an extinct giraffe and a jawbone from a million-year-old horse, which he had excavated from a vacant lot in Hoboken, New Jersey. He had waited almost a year for the event and came prepared. For the benefit of the press and other interested parties, he brought along maps of the dig site and even an inkjet photograph of himself smiling alongside the clay-dusted jawbone. But Sophia Perdikaris, an ...
