How much is that dino in the window?

By Victoria Jaggard, SCIENCE executive editor

Yes, I admit it, I am a dinosaur geek. It probably couldn’t have been helped, considering my line of work. But let’s be real: I’d wager just about everybody reading this newsletter has a favorite dinosaur. Mine is Anchiornis huxleyi, in no small part because it had the best fashion sense. And long before I went deep down the dinosaur well, my childhood fav was a much more recognizable species: Triceratops horridus.

Whether your first exposure was the stop-motion monster in 1925’s The Lost World, stuck-up Cera in 1988’s The Land Before Time, or the ailing creature in 1993’s Jurassic Park, there’s no denying the cinematic appeal of the three-horned behemoth. If you had asked me as a kid whether I’d like a real Triceratops fossil in my living room, I’d have answered with an immediate yes. As an adult, though, I’m very aware of the controversy surrounding that childhood dream.

Just a few weeks ago, the world’s largest Triceratops fossil, nicknamed Big John, went up for auction in Paris (pictured above) and sold to a private buyer for a whopping $7.7 million. As our Michael Greshko reports, that’s the highest price ever paid at auction for a fossil creature other than Tyrannosaurus rex. To be fair, experts say that Big John is not a fossil with a ton of scientific value. The species is common enough, and this specimen’s bones vary in quality. The larger concern is that the sale sets precedent for the prices dinosaurs can fetch, which in turn fuels the global trade in fossils as luxury goods.

“We want to learn the most we can from them,” says Jessica Theodor, president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, “and the way to do that is to have them in museums where everyone can look at them and everyone can study them.”

The counterargument is that commercial paleontology actually provides some of the capital and work needed to get fossils out of the ground in the first place—excavation and preparation are not cheap, especially on academic budgets. And if museums aren’t interested in fossils like Big John, being able to sell them at auction means highly motivated parties don’t have to turn to illegal markets. It’s a murky situation, for sure.

For my part, I’m content to admire dinosaurs in museums or on the silver screen. But if Steven Spielberg is ever looking to offload that animatronic Triceratops, my DMs are open.

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TODAY IN A MINUTE

Too much water: One of the world’s newest countries can’t catch a break. After years of drought, South Sudan has been suffering for three years with its worst flooding in six decades. That has forced many people to abandon communities (pictured above) as starvation, malaria, and water-borne diseases are on the rise, photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Lynsey Addario reports.

What’s organic? One U.S. businessperson sold $142 million worth of grain mislabeled as organic, part of a broader issue about the definition, certification, and accountability for organic foods. “In a market that often seems to value a certificate of authenticity over authenticity, all he had to do was lie,” the New Yorker reports.

A scientific fix to email: Researchers conducting eight studies have found a better way to treat email: Don’t look at it as a text message or Slack that you have to answer immediately. Returning email to its roots—kind of like regular, thoughtful, leisurely snail mail, except from a machine—might do the trick, Wired reports.

‘Stop talking and start doing’: That’s what, with all due respect, Vinisha Umashankar, 15, told leaders at the UN climate change summit in Glasgow. The self-described optimist from India is the creator of a solar-powered ironing cart, a finalist for this year’s Earthshot Prize, which recognizes innovations by young people to improve the planet.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Back home: Photographer Dan Winters took this profile of astronaut Shane Kimbrough before the NASA commander had an eventful six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. (Kimbrough and his crew splashed down Monday night.) Kimbrough had been posting eye-popping images from space at @astro_kimbrough. “They offer an often breathtaking, real-time glimpse of the world we all inhabit,” Winters says. For the next four years, Winters is documenting NASA’s Artemis program, which is headed back to the moon.

MEET THE ASTRONAUTS 

THE NIGHT SKIES

Spotlight on Saturn: After sunset tonight, look in the southwest sky for the moon to snuggle close to Saturn. By Thursday evening, the moon will hop over and join the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter. This pairing will be even more impressive since Jupiter appears much brighter than Saturn. For both nights turn your telescope on these gas giants and you can catch Jupiter’s storms and its four largest moons, and then Saturn and its magnificent rings. Late Thursday and before dawn Friday, you can also look for the peak of the annual Northern Taurid meteor shower. While considered modest, with up to a half-dozen shooting stars per hour, it does hold possibilities for a few fireballs. The best time to look up will be around midnight, when the Taurus constellation, the radiant of the shower, rises to its highest point in the sky. —Andrew Fazekas

SATURN 101

IN A FEW WORDS

THE LAST GLIMPSE

It’s a mystery: Why did enigmatic human relatives who lived more than 240,000 years ago wedge themselves deep into a South African cave system? Were the just-discovered bones of a young boy a deliberate burial? The latest find—six teeth and 28 skull fragments—deepens the mystery surrounding Homo naledi, writes Nat Geo’s Maya Wei-Haas. (Pictured above, the composite skeleton from a cave chamber that contained remains of at least 15 H. naledi.)

DIG DEEPER