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*Unconfirmed sources in this article: Anonymous man with "Stone Age" tools, Mike Collins, Jeff Carling, anonymous collector, tarantula donor and Jason Fortell. *
NEW YORK -- Scientists have proven that New Yorkers are a stubborn bunch, especially when it comes to their trinkets.
Good thing, too, because if the residents of this city been less firm in their convictions, Identification Day, held this Sunday at the American Museum of Natural History, would have been a crushing experience for many.
Instead it turned into a happy occasion that allowed locals to hone their already razor-sharp verbal skills by arguing with scientific experts who had just informed them that their treasures were, for the most part, trash.
The idea behind ID Day, which has been held by the museum every March for the past 14 years, is that locals can haul shells, rocks, insects, feathers, fossils, bones, pottery, textiles, or any other natural or cultural object, into the museum for a thorough going-over by experts who will tell them if the object has any financial or scientific value.
Very occasionally real treasures are discovered. Previous *Identification Day * examinations have yielded a fossilized whale’s jawbone, a rare green beetle bracelet from Brazil and a 5,000-year-old stone spear point. But most often the items are identified as tourist trinkets or valueless bits and pieces of bone and stone.
Still, hope springs eternal. So on Saturday, hundreds of people, many of whom believed they owned a wondrous and valuable relic, shuffled into the Hall of Birds of the World in the museum, placed their treasured objects on the beaten-up wooden folding tables, and waited expectantly for the experts' verdicts.
This year, the haul included carved wooden and gilded figurines, many boxes of bones, shells and rocks, woven rugs, scraps of metal and fabric, strings of beads, one live tarantula the size of a coffee cup, and one quite dead turtle. They were presented to scientists and researchers from the museum’s departments of anthropology, Earth and planetary sciences, education, entomology, ichthyology, ornithology and paleontology.
But few heard what they presumably had hoped to hear.
"This is not special, in fact it is quite common, sorry," anthropologist Anibal Rodriguez said over and over as he was presented with various objects hauled out of plastic bags, back packs and plastic milk crates.
Several stuffed vultures in a display case behind Rodriguez seemed to sneer at the hopeful collectors who'd just heard the prizes of their collections dismissed as valueless junk.
But resilient New Yorkers bounced back quickly, and quibbled with the scientists.
"What do you mean, this is just a box of rocks?" griped one man, whose collection of "Stone Age tools" had just been dismissed as a nice selection of naturally worn limestone chunks.
"You're wrong, I've been collecting these things for years and I know what I have here," the man said, and stalked off in a huff.
Others gathered in the back of the spacious room and waited to get second opinions.
"Take it over to the Met," said Mike Collins, who sells African masks at local flea markets, to another dealer who'd just been told his "antique jade carvings" were actually machine-made plastic trinkets. "Or go over to the Brooklyn Museum. I wouldn't toss it on the advice of one guy. Anyway, the stuff looks nice to me. You could still sell it."
The scientists were polite but resolute in their assessments. And a few people lucked out -- a set of fantastically carved statues that one man had bought at a Pennsylvania estate sale were proclaimed fine examples of Balinese art, and he was urged to bring the pieces to an expert to have them appraised and insured.
"I'm thrilled," said Jeff Carling, the owner of the carvings. "I bought them for a couple of hundred bucks. I had a feeling they were valuable, but I really bought them because I love them."
One collector brought in specimen boxes of beautifully preserved 100-million-year-old lizards, not for identification but just to share with the scientists. Another generous soul brought in a large furry tarantula and told the scientists they could keep it.
"I thought it'd be a nice quiet pet, but now I think a cat would be a better idea," said the tarantula's original owner. The museum adopted the creature, who will now live out its life in the entomology department.
Eight-year-old Jason Fortell bought in a cardboard box containing a large burnished shell and a collection of well-gnawed bones that he figured were either "dinosaur or cavemen bones. Or maybe even a saber tooth tiger's bones."
Gently told that the shell was the recent remains of a common box turtle and the bones came from a cow of equally modern vintage and had obviously been enjoyed by at least one dog, Fortell was undaunted.
"Cows are cool animals," Fortell said. "And so are turtles. This is good stuff I have here."
