Going through my oldest hard-disk archives, this one seems to offer a little levity. Moral of the story – if you find something in your garden, do exercise Occam’s razor. When there is a multitude of explanations, the simplest is likely to be the right one.

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There is this nutcase in Newport, Vermont, who digs things out of his back yard and sends the stuff he finds to the Smithsonian Institution, labelling them with scientific names and insisting that they are actual archaeological finds, explained the introduction to the following e-mail. This guy really exists and does this in his spare time! Anyway, here is the actual response from the Smithsonian Institution.

Smithsonian Institution
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institution, labelled “93211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post . . . Hominid skull.”

We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago. Rather, it appears what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety that one of our staff believes to be Malibu Barbie.

There are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to its modern origin:

1.   The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilised bone.

2.   The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately nine cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.

3.   The dentition pattern evident on the skull is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the ravenous man-eating Plieocene clams that you speculate roamed the wetlands at that time.

This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Let us say that:

A.  The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.

B.   Clams do not have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon-dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our laboratory must bear in its normal operation, and partly due to carbon-dating’s notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record.

To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to AD1956, and carbon-dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results. Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name Australopithecus spiffarino. Speaking personally, I fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was voted down because the species name you selected did not really sound like it might be Latin.

However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen. While it is not a Hominid fossil, it is another example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly.

You should know that our director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution. We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation’s capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the director to pay for it.

We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,

Harvey Rowe
Chief Curator – Antiquities