“Shocking Loss: How a New Jersey Fossil Treasure Was Unthinkably Trashed by UPS—All Due to a University’s Oversight!”
What happens when a university’s mailing mishap leads to the demise of a paleontologist’s lifelong work? For Martin Becker, a dedicated professor at New Jersey’s William Paterson University, the answer is a jaw-dropping saga involving 19 boxes of priceless fossils, a financial oversight, and a landfill in Tennessee. After years spent meticulously collecting Devonian Age marine invertebrates, Becker lost 80 percent of his treasured collection not to natural disaster, but to a UPS drop-off prompted by the university’s failure to pay shipping fees. Now, he’s filing a lawsuit, claiming emotional distress over what he describes as the “destruction of his life’s work.” Join us as we delve into this bizarre and heartbreaking tale of ambition thwarted by bureaucracy. Could this series of unfortunate events have been avoided? Well, it seems all he needed was a little more attention to detail… or perhaps just a bit of cash flow! LEARN MORE
Professor Martin Becker of New Jersey’s William Paterson University shipped 19 boxes of fossils to a colleague in Florida — then they were dumped in a Tennessee landfill by UPS because the university failed to make their payments.
William Paterson UniversityMartin Becker, the William Paterson University professor who filed a lawsuit after his fossils were dumped in a landfill.
New Jersey’s William Paterson University is being sued by one of its professors for neglecting to pay their UPS bills — which eventually resulted in the professor’s rare collection of prehistoric fossils being dumped in a landfill.
The collection belonged to paleontologist and professor of environmental science Martin Becker, who spent decades of his career collecting Devonian Age marine invertebrate fossils from the High Mountain area of Wayne, New Jersey. Last June, Becker packaged 200 of these fossils — 80 percent of his collection — in 19 boxes to be shipped off to a colleague in Florida for a collaborative project.
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