Tetrapodophis, an alleged snake

[Halichoeres]

Meet Tetrapodophis amplectus, an early Cretaceous lepidosaurian from Brazil. It is much too young to be a direct ancestor to snakes, but might still give us a clue about what early snakes might have looked like: elongated, with a lot of trunk vertebrae, and fossorial. The legs seem to have been an aid to constriction.

Martill, Tischlinger, & Longrich: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6246/416

[Balaur]

Okay, that's really cool! Go snakes!

[Dikiyoba]

Unfortunately, it sounds like the Tetrapodophis fossil was illegally smuggled out of Brazil. (Also, David Martill sounds like a colossal butt.)

The (Potentially Illegal) Fantastic Four-Legged Snake and the Ethics of Fossil Collection

A new snake fossil, Tetrapodophis, has been published in Science.

[Halichoeres]

That's interesting (and unfortunate). My impression of working scientists is, if you've heard of them, they're probably terrible people. Like anywhere else, the paleontologists who are just good people trying to do good work, being lawful and kind, will never be famous.

[stargatedalek]

You don't get your name known in paleontology without breaking some laws, sucking up to some movie directors, or incredible luck...
If this was illegal however, you can't really blame the paleontologist in this case, the ones to blamed are the unknown person in Brazil who sold it and the Brazilian government for its incredibly restrictive (and frankly odd) fossil laws. Its not as bad as China, where some people risk their lives in order to get needed income supplements smuggling fossils, but its still bad enough I sympathize more for the guy who sold it than the Brazilian government who lost their credit.

Tetrapodophis is a truly amazing find regardless.

[Gwangi]

I can think of a quite a few paleontologists that don't strike me as being "terrible people" and "law breakers". Scott Samson? Darren Naish? Matt Wendel? Thomas Holtz? Mark Norell? I don't personally know this people (though I have met Samson) but to suggest that we only know who they are because they did something terrible or broke a law seems like a harsh generalization.

[Halichoeres]

I can think of a quite a few paleontologists that don't strike me as being "terrible people" and "law breakers". Scott Samson? Darren Naish? Matt Wendel? Thomas Holtz? Mark Norell? I don't personally know this people (though I have met Samson) but to suggest that we only know who they are because they did something terrible or broke a law seems like a harsh generalization.

I haven't personally met these guys either and can't speak for them in particular. Maybe unfair to tar them all with the same brush, but I do know some of their grad students and I will say that what little I do know doesn't strongly refute my claim. There are perfectly lovely paleontologists in the world, of course, and I've had the pleasure to meet some of them (Sterling Nesbitt and Amy McCune spring to mind). I also don't mean that everyone who got famous did so by breaking a law. But the sorts of scientists who get famous are the ones who go looking for it, and when you go looking for it, you very often end up being underhanded, ruthless, or merely callous in the pursuit.

[Dinoguy2]

You don't get your name known in paleontology without breaking some laws, sucking up to some movie directors, or incredible luck...

Um... what? Examples? That's a pretty serious accusation. Care to name names? Every paleontologist I know the name of got their name known to me by like, writing a lot of books and papers. I.e., doing paleontology. Which movie director did Jingmai O'Connor suck up to? (Fashion magazines don't count ). How did Tom Holtz get lucky instead of doing a lot of hard work? What laws did Peter Larson break? (Actually, don't answer that last one ).

Note that Martill, though obviously a jerk, did not break any laws. He didn't personally smuggle this thing out of Brazil, assuming he's even right that it came from Brazil. Nobody knows how this specimen ended up in a German museum. It probably arrived there decades ago or more. He noticed it in a display case one day. Martin's only crime was not being polite enough to invite a Brazilian person in on the research paper, and then being a borderline racist jerk when he was called out on it.

I also don't think any paleontologists would qualify as famous... if nobody known your name outside people interested in dinosaurs, you're not famous. No paleontologist is in it for fame. If they are, they're delusional.

But the sorts of scientists who get famous are the ones who go looking for it, and when you go looking for it, you very often end up being underhanded, ruthless, or merely callous in the pursuit.

Hawking? Sagan? Tyson? Einstein? These are famous scientists. I obviously don't know any personally, but nothing I've heard about any of them made it sound like they were underhanded, ruthless, callous, or even necessarily went out of their way to seek fame. That seems like a very fake/Hollywood idea of what scientists are generally like.

[Halichoeres]

You don't get your name known in paleontology without breaking some laws, sucking up to some movie directors, or incredible luck...

Um... what? Examples? That's a pretty serious accusation. Care to name names? Every paleontologist I know the name of got their name known to me by like, writing a lot of books and papers. I.e., doing paleontology. Which movie director did Jingmai O'Connor suck up to? (Fashion magazines don't count ). How did Tom Holtz get lucky instead of doing a lot of hard work? What laws did Peter Larson break? (Actually, don't answer that last one ).

She did say "or."

Note that Martill, though obviously a jerk, did not break any laws. He didn't personally smuggle this thing out of Brazil, assuming he's even right that it came from Brazil. Nobody knows how this specimen ended up in a German museum. It probably arrived there decades ago or more. He noticed it in a display case one day. Martin's only crime was not being polite enough to invite a Brazilian person in on the research paper, and then being a borderline racist jerk when he was called out on it.

I also don't think any paleontologists would qualify as famous... if nobody known your name outside people interested in dinosaurs, you're not famous. No paleontologist is in it for fame. If they are, they're delusional.

But the sorts of scientists who get famous are the ones who go looking for it, and when you go looking for it, you very often end up being underhanded, ruthless, or merely callous in the pursuit.

Hawking? Sagan? Tyson? Einstein? These are famous scientists. I obviously don't know any personally, but nothing I've heard about any of them made it sound like they were underhanded, ruthless, callous, or even necessarily went out of their way to seek fame. That seems like a very fake/Hollywood idea of what scientists are generally like.

There are different levels of fame. Paleontologists are not movie stars (which, thank God), but there is definitely more opportunity to, say, talk to the press or be consulted on a TV show than in most other basic science fields, just because of the wow factor of dinosaurs. Some paleontologists handle this with aplomb and go back to their fossils. Others...don't.

Maybe I'm just cynical because I'm a young scientist and I've seen some people do really horrible things to each other, or really oversell the implications of their work, in the name of advancing their careers and becoming, let's say, "scientist-famous." And it's not just a scientist thing, either. I think most people (no, not all--I named some counterexamples above) who achieve notoriety have probably thrown somebody under a bus to get it.

[Halichoeres]

A new analysis finds this specimen to be a dolichosaur (a distant relative of mosasaurs), not a snake. So not only was the original description ethically dodgy, it seems like it was pretty sloppy to boot.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14772019.2021.1983044