Sir

In your Editorial 'Media frenzy' (Nature 459, 484; 2009), you discuss the hype surrounding the description of a 47-million-year-old fossil primate (J. L. Franzen et al. PLoS ONE 4, e5723; 2009). This fossil was publicized worldwide by the press using banners such as “the eighth wonder of the world” and “the missing link in human evolution”, although no such claims were made by the authors in the paper. But even more outrageous, in our view, was the earlier sale of this specimen for a huge sum.

The fossil, nicknamed 'Ida', was allegedly found by an amateur collector (C. Tudge The Link 68–69; Little, Brown, 2009) in 1983 at the Grube Messel site in Germany.

Ida's collector separated this fossil into two parts, which was unfortunate because of the scientific value of completeness. The less-complete part, now known as the B side, reportedly had some of its anatomical features fabricated to make it seem more complete (see J. L. Franzen et al. PLoS ONE 4, e5723; 2009), perhaps to facilitate its independent sale.

The B side was sold to Burkhard Pohl of the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis, then sent to Jens Franzen of the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, who described it in 1994. Meanwhile, the more complete part of Ida, now known as side A, was embedded in resin and framed. It is believed to have been kept in the anonymous collector's home for 23 years until 2006, when its photograph was shown to Jørn Hurum of the Natural History Museum in Oslo.

The asking price for side A was reportedly US$1 million, although Hurum is alleged to have eventually paid about $750,000 for it (see The Times Online, 28 May 2009). The publicity barrage surrounding this fossil seems to have been amplified by its purchase for this sum of money.

In our view, such objectionable pricing and publicity can only increase the difficulty of scientific collecting by encouraging the commercial exploitation of sites and the disappearance of fossils into private collections. We believe that payments on this scale are detrimental to scientific investigation, and respectable institutions should not be responsible for making or publicizing them. We strongly believe that fossils should not have any commercial value.