A doctorate student at the University of Leeds in Great Britain says he may sue the institute of higher learning after it “accidentally” destroyed his collection of 77 pounds of rare lizard feces during a routine laboratory cleanup.
Graduate biologist Daniel Bennett’s doctoral thesis centers around his research on the Butaan lizard, a reptile so reclusive that it was considered extinct for 130 years. Today, the species is found only on the Philippines’ remote Polillo Island.
Bennett’s research on the rare lizard has brought him some acclaim within the international scientific community. His work was the subject of a Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom series entitled, “Butaan: The Lost Dragon” appearing on the Animal Planet cable network.
The London Daily Mail reports that university authorities have apologized to Bennett, calling it an “unfortunate mistake.”
“(The samples) were thrown away in error because they were in an unmarked bag. Lessons have been learned and protocols improved to ensure this cannot happen again,” the university said in a prepared statement.
But the explanation and apology didn’t satisfy the researcher.
“To some people, it might have been just a bag of lizard s***, but to me it represented seven years of painstaking work searching the rainforest with a team of reformed poachers to find the feces of one of the world’s largest, rarest and most mysterious lizards,” said Bennett.
Somehow, we can’t picture the venerable Marlin Perkins, who debuted on the original Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom on January 6, 1963, referring to a collection of rare reptile dung as “lizard s***” on his Sunday afternoon family program.