(Original HN url is missing the final 'o' - so "404...".)
The major thrust of the article seems to be Prof. Paul Sereno - he's a paleontologist at the Univ. of Chicago - trying to defend "his own" academic turf.
> Prof Sereno, who founded the organisation Niger Heritage a decade ago, is convinced Nigerien law was broken.
> "International law says you cannot simply take something that is important to the heritage of a country - be it a cultural item, a physical item, a natural item, an extraterrestrial item - out of the country. You know we've moved on from colonial times when all this was okay," Prof Sereno says.
IANAL, but I'll call BS on saying that a rock from Mars - which plausibly no human in Niger had ever suspected the existence of - is "important to the heritage of" Niger.
(Vs. if he'd said it's a natural resource - same as the oil, gold, and whatever else natural geological processes dumped within the lines-drawn-on-human-maps portion of the Earth that we call Niger - okay, reasonable.)
The actual government of Niger seems far less concerned than Prof Sereno. And admits that it doesn't have any legislation on meteorites.
(Original HN url is missing the final 'o' - so "404...".)
The major thrust of the article seems to be Prof. Paul Sereno - he's a paleontologist at the Univ. of Chicago - trying to defend "his own" academic turf.
> Prof Sereno, who founded the organisation Niger Heritage a decade ago, is convinced Nigerien law was broken.
> "International law says you cannot simply take something that is important to the heritage of a country - be it a cultural item, a physical item, a natural item, an extraterrestrial item - out of the country. You know we've moved on from colonial times when all this was okay," Prof Sereno says.
IANAL, but I'll call BS on saying that a rock from Mars - which plausibly no human in Niger had ever suspected the existence of - is "important to the heritage of" Niger.
(Vs. if he'd said it's a natural resource - same as the oil, gold, and whatever else natural geological processes dumped within the lines-drawn-on-human-maps portion of the Earth that we call Niger - okay, reasonable.)
The actual government of Niger seems far less concerned than Prof Sereno. And admits that it doesn't have any legislation on meteorites.