Good illustrations of self publicity and soaring ambition are the private space programmes of oligarchs Elon Musk (SpaceX), Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) and Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic). For a cool US$65 million a ‘civilian’ can get a trip to the International Space Station on SpaceX; a one-hour suborbital flight on Blue Origin will cost US$300,000, with luck having Bezos as a companion; a reservation on Virgin Galactic for a 1 hour trip to the ‘edge of space’ (~100 km up) now costs US$624,000. It’s a tourist trip for the very, very rich only … but even the long-dead can go … or bits of them. On 8 September 2023 aboard Virgin Galactic flight Tim Nash, a South African billionaire had in his pocket a sturdy tube containing a thumb bone of Homo naledi and the collarbone of Australopithecus sediba. Nash reportedly said afterwards, “I am humbled and honoured to represent South Africa and all of humankind as I carry these precious representations of our collective ancestors”.
Nash was entrusted with these unique fossils by Lee Berger, Professor in Palaeoanthropology at Witwatersrand University, South Africa and a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. Berger recovered fossils of both species from limestone caves in the UNESCO World Heritage Site grandly named the Cradle of Humankind near Johannesburg. He is no stranger to controversy, and this venture cooked up with Nash seems to aim at promotion of South African achievements rather than having any scientific purpose. It has backfired spectacularly (see: McKie, R. 2023. ‘Callous, reckless, unethical’: scientists in row over rare fossils flown into space. The Observer, 22 October 2023). Comments from the anthropological world, six national and international bodies and perhaps the leading hominin specialist Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London include the words and phrases “callous”, “unethical”, “extraordinarily poorly thought-out”, “a publicity stunt”, “reckless” and “utterly irresponsible”. The caper breaks the South African, indeed international, scientific rule that fossils can only be allowed to travel for scientific purposes, applied consistently by similarly hominin-rich African countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania.
But, Hey, that’s how you get on in the world … isn’t it?
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