Fragmentary remains of two ancient human relatives, Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi, were carried aboard a Virgin Galactic flight on Sept. 8. Departing from Spaceport America in New Mexico, the fossils, carried by South African-born billionaire Timothy Nash in a cigar-shaped tube, were rocketed to the edge of space.
“I am horrified that they were granted a permit,” Sonia Zakrzewski, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Southampton in the U.K., wrote in an X thread, noting she would use it as an example in her class about unethical approaches. “This is NOT science.”
The remains, were blasted out into space.
They are not available, they are irretrievably gone.
They couldn’t be more lost to the annuals of time than things thrown in a volcano.
No? They were on a glorified plane that landed back on earth.
edit: “A two-million-year-old collarbone and a 250,000-year-old thumb bone were stored in a protected container and tucked into the pockets of Timothy Nash, one of three paying customers”
So unless they jettisoned this guy, the bones are safe …
https://www.space.com/virgin-galactic-human-fossils-in-space