FOSSIL FURY
Titanic star Leonardo di Caprio is rumoured to be interested in buying a £2.5 million pair of extremely rare dinosaur fossils – a meat-eating Allosaurus mother and baby. This has annoyed a lot of scientists, because privately-owned fossils cannot be studied by palaeontologists, meaning big gaps in our knowledge about evolution could potentially not be filled in.
‘[Dinosaur fossils] should not be auctioned at all — fossils are data, and they are our only means of understanding the history of life on this planet,’ palaeontologist Thomas Carr told Live Science in an email. ‘For publishable science to be done, the fossils must be accessioned into a legitimate museum collection.’
However, a friend of Leo’s denied that he’s so much as seen the fossils, let alone is planning to purchase them – so this row might not evolve at all!