The Great Fossil Enigma (40 page)

Throughout the summer, Scott continued to work out the evolutionary relationships of the new animal. He contacted Chuck Pollock, who had recently discovered fused conodont clusters, asking for his opinion on the makeup of Lower Silurian assemblages and admitting, “I am head over heels in studying assemblages.” Pollock's response, when it eventually came, was rather less illuminating than Scott had hoped, but Pollock admitted his hands were tied: “I hope this helps you to some extent. I'm sorry I couldn't be more specific on some points. Being with an oil company my time is limited in the time I can spend on these interesting aspects of the conodonts.” Scott then tried Lindström, who responded with the data he wanted. This made the Lower Ordovician assemblages like those he knew from the Carboniferous. The next question was “Did
Lochriea
possibly extend into the Triassic?” He asked Cameron Mosher at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

On September 14, Melton left the field, his expenses fully reimbursed and unrepentant about the fate of the quarry owner. Scott sent Melton the final copy of the conodont paper, admitting that the classification aspect was highly complex and that he might wish to protect himself from having to defend it by noting this was the work of the junior author (Scott). Melton felt no need for protection and was satisfied with the paper, though he still did not know Scott's publishing plans. Another complication was the age of the deposit. Back in June, Melton had told Scott that they had it wrong. In September, the
USGS
returned cephalopods they had sent and they were all labeled Mississippian. Melton thought the fish were like those from the “uppermost lower Carboniferous” of Scotland. In October, Scott realized he needed to do something about it, not least to “safeguard” his “personal historical position in this matter.” He sent replacement pages to Rhodes that were rather noncommittal on the point.

In September 1970, before the paper was even in press, that year's
Pander Society Letter
arrived. It pulled the rug from beneath their feet. It may have been a rather hurriedly produced newsletter, but it reached nearly every conodont worker and in that respect was opinion shaping. Here, Huddle captured the sensational aspect of the East Lansing meeting but repeated his earlier claim that until proven otherwise this was the animal that ate the conodont animal rather than the elusive animal itself.
¹⁹
The report ended with a cartoon that had one of Melton and Scott's animals say to another, “Did you have a good breakfast?” To which the second responded, “Fine, but it was full of little bones.” Beneath it, Huddle wrote, “Remember Branson and Mehl's reaction to the assemblages reported by Scott and Schmidt?” Was Huddle reporting on the irony of Scott's situation, here, or engineering it? Of course, Huddle had been on the side of Branson and Mehl in that argument, until Rhodes had proven Scott's point. Scott could not help but feel that his science was being ridiculed, seeing it as the work of those who had sought to disrupt his plans after the Chicago convention. Elsewhere in the newsletter, a strange, fanged, alien caterpillar-like cartoon animal peered menacingly at readers. Titled “Another candidate for THE conodont-bearing animal,” it depicted the “aboriginal leech” said by distinguished geologist Joseph Peter Lesley in 1892 to have possessed the conodont fossils as teeth. Were readers to imagine Scott as a modern day Lesley?

Scott wrote a formal letter to the editor. “This implication is false and needs to be referred to,” he said. He pointed out that five tons of rock had been excavated in 1968 and one hundred tons the following year; thousands of square feet of bedding plane had been examined without finding a single isolated conodont. The only place they were found is in the animals themselves. To Scott, this was a striking observation, for how could a conodont animal eater exist where there were apparently no conodont animals to be eaten? He pointed out that the opening detected in the animal was too small to permit a conodont bearing animal to be swallowed and that the conodonts themselves were unbroken and undamaged by digestive action. But most convincing was the fact that the assemblages were not of mixed forms – they conformed precisely to those he and Rhodes had described years earlier. Scott's interpretation had been arrived at by careful examination of the evidence: “Any suggestion that the conodonts have been ingested is wholly untenable and there is no evidence whatsoever to support such a conclusion. New evidence based on the 1969 finds wholly supports the original position.”

Melton, not being a member of the conodont community, remained unaware of this development. Scott, however, prepared a note to be appended to their paper. This Scott later modified, probably at Rhodes's advice, to a rather bland statement regarding doing their best with the interpretation and being aware of other interpretations.

Scott's correspondence with his public now became rather less emphatic: “Briefly, they are protochordates; and you may rest assured that they were free-swimming and in my judgment mostly planktonic forms. They are about 2½ inches long, and the conodont elements were part of the digestive tract as part of a filter-feeding system (in my judgment).” The enquirer, realizing he had missed a momentous event at East Lansing, then asked Scott if he now understood why the platforms evolved so rapidly. Such enquiries might force Scott to ponder previously unasked questions. He postulated: “In my judgment, the bladed forms were probably vertically arranged in a basket and were relatively stabilized whereas the platform elements were horizontally arranged and were active ‘food movers and sorters.' Therefore, they were subject to active evolution.”

Given the failures of the previous year, Melton wondered if the case for the next field season might better succeed if made on the basis of the fish, which were jumping out of the rocks in large numbers. The conodont animal had once again become a rarity. They could get, he believed, “at least two or three…. Fifty would be nice but in the realm of improbability.” The past season had produced 90 fishes, 79 shrimps, 17 brachiopod slabs, 25 cephalopods (straight and coiled), 18 slabs containing “grass,” 27+ coprolites, 6+ worms, 2 clams, 2 mites (which Melton thought fish parasites), 11 slabs of bryozoans, and 37 slabs of organic material. Much was new, and some material extraordinary. The season had delivered three conodont animals. By December, Scott had news that a bid for further funding had been successful – enough to give Melton and Horner one thousand dollars each plus expenses. When the season came, Scott was attentive to Melton's needs, wishing him to eat and sleep well. He retained a cushion of five hundred dollars just in case of medical expenses and other contingencies and told Melton to call if it was needed at any time. Scott was then preparing a second paper on the animals for a little geological series published by his own department. Melton, hearing that Scott was preparing for a European tour that fall, which would include attendance at the Marburg conference on conodont taxonomy, told him, a little prophetically, as we shall see, “Incidentally from the literature I would say that the Glencartholm section around Edinburgh would be the next most likely place to look for conodont animals.”

In June 1971, the East Lansing book seemed to be progressing well. Melton was in the quarry sheltering from the summer rain, catching up with his field notes and dropping Scott a line on progress. Fish were being found, but the year was proving colder and even less productive. The most interesting fossil was a “worm like thing shaped like Amphioxus” that Horner had found. Melton calculated that it took forty hours to find a fish and an impossible number of hours to find a conodont. The quarry owner was, from Melton's perspective, “still causing trouble…. I thought I was rid of him but apparently not.” He thought some kind of feud between the local and state offices of the Bureau of Land Management had permitted the owner back.

Melton was also now planning for funded excavations in future years, and at the same time he worried that “the legislature is in a hassle about how to finance the state for the next two years.” No one at the university had contracts. In Michigan, too, there was much financial uncertainty. The summer malaise was broken, however, when, in mid-August, Melton sent Scott four conodont assemblages (three individuals) Horner had found.

In late September, Scott considered the future of the animal fossils. Other than those that belonged to the University of Montana, they were, so he believed, his personal possessions. Scott now drew up a statement of his wishes regarding them in case of his “death or incapacity to act.” This gave full control of the specimens to Rhodes to do with them as he wished. Rhodes thanked him and reassured him: “I am sure that there is no question of any need for this, but please be assured that I am honored that you should put such trust in me.” What had prompted Scott's actions is unclear. Perhaps he had returned from the Marburg meeting realizing that the world had now changed from the one he knew. Rhodes wrote to lift him, “I could not help feeling in retrospect how much the whole convention owed to you, for the initial discovery in 1934 and still more for your ongoing leadership in the field of conodont research. It must be a matter of great satisfaction that the pendulum has swung so far away from the initial skepticism of some conodont workers about the validity of natural assemblages, so that now a group of 70 experts meets together with the sole purpose of facing up to the taxonomic reflections of these assemblages.” Eight months later, Scott contacted the National Museum in Washington to carry through what he said he would always do: transfer the fossils to the central repository where they could be available to all and properly protected. It is clear that Scott felt the weight of responsibility of possessing objects so unique and important. Whether he was prompted by rumors is unknown, but it would be natural for a scientist to retain material until after the paper was published and then find a permanent repository.

December 1971 arrived without the paper appearing. Scott sent his Christmas letter to his old mentor, Carey Croneis, enclosing a description and sketch of the “missing link”: “I thought you would be interested in these comments and the enclosed picture of what may be one of the most important finds in paleontological history. I say this because I am of the opinion that this animal may have been an important link in the early history of the vertebrate group.” Soon 1972 arrived. The sensation of the discovery and its publicity in 1970 was now a fading memory, and the paper describing it was still locked in the G
SA
publishing house. Melton was back in the field with Horner, unfunded but pulling out fish faster than ever before. He promised to send Scott any conodonts they found.

In May, Scott heard from Charlie Collinson that Melton had given permission for him to publish a figure of the conodont in a field guide he was producing. Scott expressed his regret that this would preempt publication of the paper, which was now expected to appear sometime between August and November. Scott asked Collinson to include a statement that “reproduction or reprinting is specifically prohibited” but doubted it would have any validity. He asked Melton not to circulate any further pictures, but Melton corrected Scott on the details. He had not given Collinson the drawing-it was the one made at the Chicago meeting. “Since it appeared that he had it, I could see no reason to add to the confusion by being credited with finding the thing and having it published upside down.” Melton continued, “I do not particularly like the idea since I was not sure that he was asking me or telling me and there was an implication that we were withholding information which is not true.” The animal had been found more than three years earlier, and the supposed secrecy was entirely due to the slowness of the
GSA'S
presses. Scott told Melton, “I think you had no other choice and handled it well.”

Later in the month, Scott heard from the National Museum and began the process of allocating numbers to the conodont animals, asking Melton if he approved of this plan. Melton told him not to use the National Museum numbers for the type specimens – the most important specimens – as they were to be retained by the University of Montana, “at least for the present.” This, too, was a natural curatorial reaction. He knew he could care for them and also that they would give his department celebrity and importance. Melton also told Scott that they had found another four conodont fossils, including two complete animals. By the end of the season Scott had nine, all confirming their earlier conclusions. Scott felt Melton should publish them, but Melton was happy to see Scott do it, if only “to convince those who don't believe in them that they have to at least consider them.” Scott produced a report but it was not published.
²⁰

The East Lansing paper remained in the doldrums, the
GSA
editor now replaced. Scott's second paper, to be published by his own university, was waiting in the wings; it could not be published first. Unknown to Scott, Melton had published a local account, certain their paper would by then be out. He now sat on a heap of reprints awaiting that day. Then, in December, a gale blew the roof off the
GSA
editor's office. As he told Rhodes, “The next day the snow melted and my entire office was inundated, causing considerable damage to my furniture and the papers spread out across my desk. Among these was the material for Special Paper 141 which I was assembling for you.” Promises of speedy resolution never materialized, and in the first months of 1973, Scott found himself answering correspondents who blamed him for forgetting them. The paper was becoming as elusive as the animal. Then news came that it would appear on the last day of May 1973, three years after Melton and Scott had presented it. They finally saw it in July. After all that delay, two figures – one of the rock face and the other a reconstruction of the animals swimming in the sea – were published upside down, making both incomprehensible. The publisher also had resized all the images without stating the new magnifications, giving the animal a variable and inexplicable scale. This was the only paper botched up in this way, but no conspiracy theorists took up the cause. This was not the luxuriant publication Scott had imagined, but as it was edited by his longtime friend, he said nothing. A list of errata was pasted into every book. All in all, the publication of this, billed as one of the most important papers in the history of paleontology, had been an unmitigated disaster. He had imagined this as a glorious personal moment, but the whole exercise had done him considerable personal damage. It was as if the world had conspired against him, through little fault of his own.