Dear People Who Think They Have Found the Artifact that Will Change Archaeology As We Know It,

I am currently in the 25th grade. If you ask me to identify your artifact please do not call me "little lady" or turn to face the undergraduate male standing beside me to answer the question I just asked you. It is also bad form to send me an email with a subject line THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME WITH MY PHALLUS PENIS HAMMER. I realize that you are appreciative of the long and uncomfortable half hour we spent together as I explained why your stone maul could not be both "nipple topped" and "phallic" at the same time. I am, however, a state employee, the university reads my emails, and my boss is getting the wrong impression.

If you found a dinosaur egg in a stream bed it is not an artifact, it is a fossil. Please contact the Paleontology Department. If that stream bed is full of similarly shaped rocks, if there are in fact "hundreds of 'em," you have not discovered the lost dinosaur egg graveyard. My attempts to talk you through the scientific reasoning behind why this is not the case have obviously been a complete failure.

If you have found a footprint preserved in stone that belonged to Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti or any other scientifically unconfirmed beast, please write to the Mammalogy Department.

• If you found a tool made by one of the aforementioned creatures, we are still debating whether or not you have contacted the right department. And it is not an artifact.

• Similarly, do not contact me about finding pieces of UFO's. Archaeologists study artifacts made by humans, not extraterrestrials.

Dracena wrote::rofl: I still suspect some restraint has been excercised when writing that letter.