I'm sure shootaway would enjoy life with the Turkana. They're always looking for a new goatherder or two... The spitting cobras up there can be a real bitch, though...

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Bear in mind shootaway said he would come see us "posers" in Dallas this year -- won't that be a pleasant meeting?

He'll be easy to spot, "Depends" bulge under his shorts, spittle dangling from the side of his mouth and a sign on his ass that says "kick me." Wonder how much lunch money he lost as a kid...jorge

Field angles for Kenya's famed Turkana Boy


'TOO FRAGILE' | Won't lend lions, but may swap their skulls

September 20, 2007
BY ANDREW HERRMANN Staff Reporter
Whether Kenya wants the Field Museum's famous man-eating lions for keeps or simply wants to borrow them, the answer is the same: No.

But the Field has begun discussions with Kenya that could result in a swap of sorts: The museum would loan Kenya some skull bones of the lions while Turkana Boy, a nearly complete skeleton of a 1.5 million-year-old hominid boy, would temporarily visit here.

News reports this month indicated the Kenyan government wanted to repatriate the so-called "Maneaters of Tsavo.'' Since those accounts, Kenya officials reportedly have said they just wish to borrow the preserved creatures that killed about 140 railroad workers in Kenya in 1898.




The Field Museum of Chicago has begun discussions with Kenya about a loan trade: The Field would send Kenya the skull bones of the man-eating lions from Tsavo, left, for Turkana Boy, right, a nearly complete skeleton of a 1.5 million 11/12-year-old hominid boy.
(Courtesy)

In his first public comments on the situation, Field president John McCarter said the lions -- killed by Kenya railroad engineer Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson -- are "too fragile'' to hit the road.
Before the museum bought the skins from Patterson for $5,000 in 1924, "basically they were rugs on Col. Patterson's floor for 10, 15 years. They were walked on," which loosened them, explained McCarter.

"We really can't do it,'' said McCarter of moving the skins. But McCarter revealed that "we have talked about how some of the [lions'] skeletal material could go back." The skulls are not inside the preserved lions.

McCarter said Field officials have also "been talking about Turkana Boy seriously now for the last 18 months.'' Discovered in 1984 near Lake Turkana in Kenya, Turkana Boy is a chinless predecessor to humans with a sloping forehead and long arms and considered a jewel of the National Museums of Kenya.

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Field angles for Kenya's famed Turkana Boy

So they can ask for HIM back in a hundred years. If Kenya can ask for the maneaters return, how safe are your trophies. (I know they're pretty safe, but I can certainly see the Kenyans "Trophy Hunting" in our best natural history museums) I'm voting No return! do not set a precedent.