Do Dodo Bones Belong in a Museum?
By Jack Ashby, on 14 November 2013
This week the Daily Mail reported that two bones from a dodo were set to sell at auction for £30,000. This would be the first private sale of a dodo bone since 1934*. My first reaction was one of horror. Why is that?
These are two main reasons why I might deplore this sale:
1) It should be in a museum.
2) We shouldn’t put a value on natural history objects.
I’d like to explore why these might not be reasonable objections.
It Should be in a Museum: For Science
This is the reaction I got on Twitter when discussing this story, and it seems reasonable. Valuable natural history specimens that aren’t in museums are lost to science, as I have argued before when discussing Channel 4’s Four Rooms.
But are these two bones – a femur and partial pelvis – valuable natural history specimens? I’m not convinced. (more…)