Paleontology Conference Catering Accidentally Serves Bone Broth, Attendees Unable to Stop Making Jokes About It

The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology descended into what organizers described as 'sustained, discipline-wide hilarity' after the conference caterer unknowingly served bone broth as a lunch option to an audience of approximately 800 people who study bones for a living. The laughter began in the main dining hall at approximately 12:15 PM, when attendees noticed the menu card reading 'Artisanal Bone Broth with Root Vegetables,' and did not fully subside until nearly 2 PM, causing the cancellation of three afternoon poster sessions. 'I've been to every SVP since 1992 and I have never seen anything like it,' said Dr. Patricia Fossil of Yale. 'Someone said, "I wonder whose bones these are," and the entire room lost it. Eight hundred paleontologists, tears streaming down their faces.' The jokes, described by non-paleontologist catering staff as 'incomprehensible,' reportedly included a lengthy analysis of whether the broth's taphonomic signature indicated a commercial or artisanal preparation method, a staged 'excavation' of a chicken bone from a bowl using dental picks and brushes, and a formal petition to submit the broth as a poster presentation under the title 'Novel Decoction Methodology Applied to Holocene Gallus gallus Elements.' 'We were trying to be health-conscious,' said caterer Denise Brewer. 'We had no idea bone broth would be an issue. They were so happy, but also they wouldn't stop laughing, and several of them asked if the bones could be accessioned into a collection, and I don't know what that means.' Conference organizers have requested that next year's caterer 'avoid menu items that reference skeletal material, teeth, sediment, or anything that could be described using Latin binomial nomenclature.'