SMITHSONIAN — Metropolitan Police took five members of GU Fossil Free into custody Monday night after they were caught vandalizing the Tyrannosaurus rex fossil in the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum.
Responding to a call from museum security, the police apprehended the students as they were throwing buckets of yellow paint onto the petrified remains of the 38-foot predator. No forced entry had been made; security footage revealed that the students had slipped into the museum’s fossil wing by covering themselves with animal pelts and “convincingly” posing in the Neanderthal display when the museum was closed at 5:30 PM.
The “after” picture of the dinosaur’s bones was considered to be too lewd to be published by editors.
“I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff in my twenty years on the force,” Police Lieutenant Chuck Briggs commented, “but this has got to take the cake. I mean, who’s got a beef with a T. rex? Either these kids are the world’s biggest triceratops fans, or they were on some sort of Koch-fueled trip.”
Contrary to Lieutenant Brigg’s supposition, the incident does not appear to have been conceived as a protest against the politics of David H. Koch, whose $35 million donation is facilitating the current renovation of the museum’s fossil wing. Rather, the students appear to have been motivated solely out of a hatred of fossils.
“Take that, T. rex!” one of the students, Pavel Krasotkin (SFS ’17), was heard to exclaim as he was led to a police vehicle. “Yeah, let’s see you scientists go all Jurassic Park on us now!”
GU Fossil Free issued a statement denying any complicity in the vandalism: “GU Fossil Free is committed to green energy and advocating for Georgetown University’s divestiture of fossil fuels in its endowment. We do not and have never supported violence against physical fossils. The students implicated in this incident represent a splinter group of the GU Fossil Free movement and were excommunicated after setting fire to a Fossil store last March.”
The Smithsonian has begun assessing the damage done to the T. rex fossil. Thirty-five percent of the skeleton is coated in yellow paint, generally taking the form of crudely drawn penises.
“This is an unmitigated disaster for our institution,” said museum director Kirk Johnson. “The T. rex wasn’t even ours; it was on loan from the Army Corps of Engineers. Oh God! Can you imagine what those guys will do to me when they find out what I let happen to their dinosaur? I need to get the hell out of the country!”
Four of the students involved will appear before a grand jury next week facing charges of trespassing and vandalism. Krasotkin will additionally face one charge of indecent exposure, having been apprehended while urinating on a velociraptor.