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Abstract
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For the past decade, paleontologists have increasingly been using a unique window to peer into the past: amber--blobs of hardened tree resin--that preserves in exquisite detail insects, plants, tiny lizards, and bits of larger organisms, such as the feathered tail from a dinosaur.
Recent papers have analyzed samples taken from one of the world's richest amber deposits, dating to 99 million years ago during the height of the Cretaceous and located in what is today Myanmar. But that country is riven by political conflict. Now, a new study suggests paleontological research has directly benefited from the conflict in Myanmar, which has created opportunities for ethically questionable mining, trade, and collecting practices.
Almost all recently studied Myanmar amber can be linked to the nation's discord, with outside paleontologists taking advantage of the political upheaval, the new paper claims. "This became the region of conflict, which is directly related to amber," says co-author Nussaïbah Raja Schoob, a paleobiologist at the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU). She hopes the paper will force paleontologists to reconsider how they work. The paper adds that almost all publications lack researchers from Myanmar itself, possibly because the few paleontologists there haven't been able to study exported specimens...
Language: en |