
A Lizard Lost at Sea Makes Its Return - anthotny
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-lizard-lost-at-sea-makes-its-return
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dmix
> Last month, citing incomplete documentation, Australian customs officials
> incinerated six holotypes on loan from Paris—all daisies, a few from the
> late eighteenth century.

The only thing worse than losing your precious holotype specimen in a sinking
ship is when they are purposefully destroyed thanks to beurcratic
incompetence.

Edit: found the backstory about the incenerated daises
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/world/australia/rare-
plan...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/world/australia/rare-plants-
destroyed.html)

~~~
jessaustin
In Australia's defense, if an imported item is "priceless and irreplaceable",
maybe one can't put _that_ on the form, but it's certainly possible not to
estimate the value at "$2".

~~~
dmix
Yes, it was incompetence by the Paris university as well as potentially the
customs rules and whoever was the intended recipient in Australia. Any one of
those could have handled this better.

Customs waited 76 days before destroying it and contacted them twice
requesting more information, so they aren't totally at fault.

Either the customs policy of incineration wasn't made obvious to people
shipping/receiving the products or the Aussie researcher neglected to tell the
Paris branch.

The most obvious error here is that the Paris school didn't identify the real
value of the item in the paperwork (maybe to avoid import taxes?). This has
many implications when you send a valuable item through the mail. Including
insurance coverage.

~~~
seszett
The article does say, though:

> _“The problem is that we were warned of nothing,” Mr. Guiraud said. The
> museum sent specimens from the Lagenophora family, which includes daisies,
> and was notified that a quarantine document was missing. “We filled it out
> and sent it,” Mr. Guiraud said, adding that the paperwork was in order. Two
> weeks later, the museum learned the specimens had been destroyed._

So it's not completely obvious where the fault was. Having _some_ experience
with French administration though, they're probably faulty in at least some
part.

Also, it's not really just "a Paris school" but the oldest Natural History
museum in the world with one of the largest collections (I've actually worked
and collected specimens for them, too). So they do have some experience in
sharing and handling their collections, which is why I don't think they can be
entirely at fault there.

