“It looks like chewing gum,” said a visiting child on a field trip.
A closer inspection revealed the child was correct, and the fossil’s age was subsequently corrected from 20 million years old to several days. A more accurate estimation was not possible because the chewing gum brand had not yet been definitively established.
The sorely disappointed researchers took heart when Wrigley’s and Cadbury, two giants of the worldwide gum industry, undertook a bidding war to provide continued funding to the research team.