Orr understood these limitations.

He preserved the bones, published what he could responsibly claim, and waited.

The Bones In Museum Drawers

For nearly thirty years, the Arlington Springs femora sat in storage at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.

This was not neglect; it was the appropriate scientific practice of an era when the concept of leaving samples for future improved methods had become recognized as a strategy of genuine value.

The idea that material should be held back for future technology had been gaining currency in archaeological circles through the 1960s and 1970s, as the speed of methodological improvement in the dating sciences became apparent.