From the back catalog... way back

September 3, 2008 8:14 PM

New Yorker buffs with long memories and amazing search capacities: Looking for a humorous article about battling paleontologists. (More inside)

I can't find a piece from The New Yorker that detailed a fistfight between two paleontologists in a museum, complete with detail drawing tracing their fight through the displays. It ran well before e-archiving, perhaps even 15+ years ago. Search tips, other than doing a LOT of thumbing through hundreds of issues, as entertaining as that would be? Or is there a mefi-er out there who can locate it? It was paper-bag, hyperventilation funny.

posted by Arch1 to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

It was illustrated? That sounds like something Bruce McCall might have done. Do any of these images remind you of the illustration style from that old article?
posted by moonmilk at 9:59 PM on September 3, 2008

Two possiblities:
Article: John Seabrook on the head of the brontosaurus
Topic area: Bone Wars, Cope vs Marsh. Check the bibliography there to see if the article you're thinking of is in there.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:01 PM on September 3, 2008

Best answer: It was a short fiction piece called "Fossil News", by James Stevenson. May 11, 1987, p. 36-37. God bless The Complete New Yorker.
posted by donnagirl at 5:59 PM on September 4, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oh, and it's absolutely the drawings that make it funny. Not only is there a map of the fight path, but there are skeletal renderings of each paleoanthropologist, with locations of various blows carefully labeled "A", "B", etc. I got a partial screenshot, but getting complete things out of Complete New Yorker isn't as easy as I'd like it to be.
posted by donnagirl at 6:13 PM on September 4, 2008 [1 favorite]