Dinosaurs in the Attic Read Free Page A

small that the female was only able to carry one egg at a time. That single egg became much more biologically precious when it was the only one available—and thus the female had to ensure that it was fertilized and hatched. Unfortunately, this stricture made finding a male to fertilize the egg quickly rather important. Indeed, finding a male became such a matter of inconvenience for the female of a species with such limited mobility that the population eventually did away with males entirely. Instead, the egg matures without being fertilized, by the process called parthenogenesis. And when the males were bypassed in the reproductive process, they eventually died out.

To corroborate his theory, Dybas looked to see if other extremely small insects had developed parthenogenesis. Just as he suspected, he found other species that had done away with males.

Next, he addressed the riddle of why 80 percent of the Bimini beetles lacked the feathery wings that were present on the same mainland species. The obvious answer came to him in a sudden flash. On a low, windswept island such as Bimini, beetles dispersed by air currents stood a great chance of being blown out to sea and certain death. (On the mainland, of course, dispersal would be a favorable adaptation, allowing the beetles to spread to new habitats.)

Dybas' research, however, did more than just prove his hypothesis. While researching his theories, Dybas examined one vial of American Museum specimens in detail, all supposedly of the same species. He noticed that a particular internal organ in some of them differed markedly from the same organ in others from the same vial. He realized that one of the groups was a new species, entirely unknown to science.

The science of zoology has established that certain things must be done when a new species is discovered. In the first step, the discoverer must select one organism as the "type" specimen. The type specimen then becomes the physical and legal representative of all of its kind. It will be the actual specimen the scientist uses to describe what the new species looks like, and it is the individual that all others will be compared or contrasted with, and measured against, for the rest of time. Today, most species of animal are represented somewhere by a type specimen, many of which date back several centuries or more. *1

Thus, from the hundreds of specimens of the new insect, Dybas selected the most normal, the most average individual he could find, and designated it the type. In doing so, he made an utterly insignificant beetle—an almost invisible brown period—a scientifically priceless specimen. Underneath me somewhere is that tiny brown beetle, locked in its cabinet, resting in perpetuity as the official representative of all of its kind.

The Museum is the guardian of thousands of such seemingly insignificant specimens, but as each bone in the mighty Tyrannosaurus is just a piece in the puzzle of the whole, each tiny bug is an indispensable link in the chain of knowledge that exists in the collections of the American Museum. Like the beetle, virtually every Museum specimen is invested with significance and a history. (Indeed, specimens without a history are often thrown out.) I opened this book with B. intricata because it is an example, in microcosm, of what the Museum is. Most of the Museum's more exciting specimens don't have the kind of calm, rational history that B. intricata possesses. Roy Chapman Andrews fought gun battles with Mongolian bandits to protect his dinosaur specimens; Carl Akeley lost his life in the Belgian Congo collecting for the Museum's African Hall; Fitzhugh Green lost his mind while searching for a continent that didn't exist. These stories seem superficially very different from the story of B. intricata—but they are all links in the vastly complex history of the American Museum.

ONE

    The Museums That Almost Were

    Abandoned and forgotten in the southern portion of New York's Central Park,