Professor sues the university: the delivery service threw out fossils aged 380 million years for debts (2 photos)
In the US, Professor William Paterson University in New Jersey has filed a lawsuit against the school, accusing it of negligence, due to which his unique collection of 380 million-year-old fossils ended up in a landfill in Nashville, Tennessee 
According to the lawsuit filed in Passaic County Court, professor and paleontologist Martin Becker spent hundreds of hours collecting marine invertebrates from the Devonian period in the High Mountain area of Wayne, New Jersey. Becker planned to send his collection to a colleague in Florida for further study.
On June 18, he delivered 19 boxes of fossils—about 80 percent of his collection—to postmaster Raymond Boone, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. He promised to provide a tracking number and insurance, but Becker never received them.
A few weeks later, it turned out that the package had never arrived. It wasn’t until August 20, after several calls to the university’s postal service, that Becker received information about the package’s location: the packages were in Parsippany, New Jersey, awaiting delivery.
Over the course of a month, Becker repeatedly contacted Boone, who assured him he was “working on a solution.” But on September 20, Becker was informed that the packages might be being held by UPS’s fraud department. 
On September 30, the professor contacted UPS directly and found out that his packages were intercepted due to unpaid bills from the university. It turned out that UPS had canceled the school's account on April 24, and Boone knew about it since at least July 8. As a result, all the fossils were dumped in an unspecified landfill in the Nashville area.
Now the professor is demanding compensation for the loss of the collection and reimbursement of medical expenses caused by emotional stress.
Raymond Boone declined to comment. Representatives of the university and Becker himself have not yet responded to press inquiries.
