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US Paleontologists Call For a Worldwide Halt To the Sale of Vertebrate Dinosaur Fossils (theguardian.com)
Leading US paleontologists are calling for a worldwide halt to the sale of vertebrate dinosaur fossils. The booming market for specimens, driven by their popularity with wealthy private collectors, including Hollywood stars, is pushing up prices and putting them out of reach of museums and scientists, they say. From a report: While the art market is organized around brand-name artists, dinosaur sales are all about celebrity species, with a tyrannosaurus rex skeleton fetching up to $10m, although the velociraptor is the most prized. The price tag for a triceratops's skull is $170,000 to $400,000, and a diplodocus is $570,000 to $1.1m. Last year a complete egg of an aepyornis maximus, otherwise known as an elephant bird, sold for $130,000 -- roughly five times what it would have gone for a decade earlier.
Last year the US Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology (SVP) called on the Parisian auction house Aguttes to cancel a sale inside the Eiffel tower that contained just one lot: a 29-foot-long dinosaur of a yet-to-be identified species. The winning bidder paid $2.3m for the piece. Executive members of the society drew attention to the claim that the winning bidder could name the species, calling that assertion "misleading because the naming of new species is governed by the rules of the International Code of Nomenclature." "The sale of all fossils is inappropriate," says Catherine Badgley, former president of the SVP, which represents more than 2,200 international palaeontologists. "Many, particularly vertebrate fossils, are rarely common, and it's certainly not the case for dinosaurs. The commodification is in principle inappropriate because it motivates unscrupulous people."
Last year the US Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology (SVP) called on the Parisian auction house Aguttes to cancel a sale inside the Eiffel tower that contained just one lot: a 29-foot-long dinosaur of a yet-to-be identified species. The winning bidder paid $2.3m for the piece. Executive members of the society drew attention to the claim that the winning bidder could name the species, calling that assertion "misleading because the naming of new species is governed by the rules of the International Code of Nomenclature." "The sale of all fossils is inappropriate," says Catherine Badgley, former president of the SVP, which represents more than 2,200 international palaeontologists. "Many, particularly vertebrate fossils, are rarely common, and it's certainly not the case for dinosaurs. The commodification is in principle inappropriate because it motivates unscrupulous people."
It seems to me that bringing in vast dollar amounts for collecting fossils should be a good thing for paleontology. More money should mean more resources to dig them up, increasing the overall supply of fossils available to humans to study.
Rich folks are incented to protect their new (expensive) investments. Rich folks might want to donate them to museums for display in exchange for having their name next to the display. Sufficiently rich folks might want to create their own research center for paleontologists to work in exchange for recognition and as a status symbol.
I'm just spitballing, but the above comments from paleontologists sound a bit like whining: If no one cared about dinosaurs, rich folks wouldn't collect them AND no one would care about paleontology.
If Paleontologists cannot even govern members of their own profession, what hope do they have convincing a far larger audience to stop selling and buying dinosaur bones? How many non-Paleontologists are finding and extracting dinosaur bones for private sale?
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Never mind that many of these fossils sit in the archives of a museum lost and forgotten for years. Perhaps a better route is to give a paleontologist an opportunity to look at it first, then pass it on to the private market.
Based on the article, it sounds like they want the fossils to go "scientists and museums", or generally to whomever will.make best use of them. There is no mention of how they propose to decide who gets them, though. I'm a citizen scientist, do I get one?
Apparently in order to get them I do *not* need to contribute toward the costs involved in finding and preserving them. I would also NOT need to show that I have a compelling reason to have one by putting my money where my mouth is. So what's the proposal?
I just want the gemified/agatized bone. That shit is awesome looking when cut and polished.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
If it wasn't for sale of artifacts, many of these paleontologists wouldn't have gotten previous skeletons to begin with.
Furthermore the real solution is to require a core sample and xray taken from each dinosaur skeleton to be sold, and a that all winning bidders of a dinosaur skeleton be publicly disclosed. Most of these people don't want their identity known, and by knowing it, there is scrutiny possible into their income and activities, which may curb the extreme prices on some of these items since they are basically being purchased as high value collateral in case said wealthy individual needs to move large sums of money discreetly.
No one has to abide by the International Code of Nomenclature, you or your church or community or your government can make up whatever names you like. They can do nothing about it... they're not the police
Otherwise you'ld know how much horseshit is spewing out of your mouth.
The Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller Alberta is a great place to lose your ignorance!
Charge way more. 10X more. And then start discrediting all those sellers who are "not legit palenwhatologists" as selling fakes.
1. Palenwhatolgists/museums will get loads of money
2. They will control what gets sold
3. Idiots will have their money redistributed
The biggest non-fake not-Chinese deposit is on land owned by the Blackfoot in Alberta. They sell the big ones for $300,000 CDN. They also dont sell the very best ones..
"US paleontologists upset at increase in fossil bed destruction"
Once the fossils have market value other than to palenotologists, non-palentologists will just ignore any that turn up during excavations.
Creimer gave $71 to Second Harvest Food Bank to stick it to VOX Media and The Verge. #SomethingPositive
Let's just put them on the endangered species list.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You have no scientific credentials to lose or be tarnished, so you wouldn't understand why people who have decades long careers studying this would avoid such things. It's entirely reasonable that you don't get it. How could you understand?
It's entirely foreign to you.
I though a Dinosaurs was a Reptile limbs are Aligned at 90 degrees. All Dinosaurs are Vertebrates.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I've heard there's something called the free market which will magic new, genuine, verterbrate fossils out of thin fucking air.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
How is that incentivized by spending more on the items or procurement? Your whole logical line is retarded. The people who donate donate and those who do not, which is the vast majority, do not. It's a financial endeavor.
They are collectors, not scientists. Scientists don't need to "own" something to appreciate, learn and share the value. Collectors sole objective is to own. Private ownership of fossils ought to be illegal. It belongs to everybody.
Ban the dino fossils now, ban all fossils tomorrow, courts rule fossil fuels are ipso facto fossils, and boom! all of us will be forced to drive that bug eyed Nissan Leaf.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What someone will pay for it.
THEY DON'T OWN IT!
Nah, he's trolling.
He's pretending (whether to himself or not, I don't know) that young earthers are a large percentage of the population.
And, he's probably implying that those who have problems with evolution are also young earthers. So, not true.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
There is something worse than the concentration of capital - it's the concentration of political power.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
You are an ignorant redneck piece of trailer trash.
Everyone knows that the fossils are the dragons and monsters in mythology over the last 6000 years. They have a museum that proves it.
The scientists simply can't. If they do, they lose control of the narrative. We have found so many items that are just straight up weird, like giant people fossils, anachronistic gadgetry, and ancient egyptian artifacts. These things contradict the "offical" explanations about things. In Egypt alone, we know Zhai Hawass, the former head archaologist and Minister of Antiquities of Egypt has been caught in cover ups regarding items that would cause religious issues between muslims and christians and possibly counter what we they accept as proof of god, etc. One such example of that is hidden passages and rooms within the Sphynx. There are actual footage from older documentaries where he's standing in a hatch atop the head of the Sphynx. However, the narrative that's been pushed since at least 2015 is flat out denial by himself that anything of that nature exists. If any old joe blow was allowed to start independent studies of ancient dinosaur fossils and artifacts, then what they could find may rock the entire foundations of everything we know. You shake those kind of foundations and already weak governemnts could fall as well. What else could they be lying about? What else are they hiding, etc. And when I say that, I'm not necessarily talking about consipracy theory type stuff. It doesn't matter what is said or discovered. The issue is with control and loyalty to the government. No need to involve aliens here.
We got a winner here. Simply look at the videos on youtube. You can find plenty of people that you can hire for pennies a day to take you wherever you want to go and get you all kinds of trinkets, at least in Egypt. No reason to think I couldn't do the same with the old Mayan or Incan areas either.
Which you hypocritically typed on a device that is the product of capitalism. Why aren't you using electronic products from non-capitalist countries like France, Cuba or Venezuela? That's right, because government run economies suck at everything except making the powerful richer and everyone else poorer.
It's about paid science jobs for palentologists at museums, consulting fees paid to palentologists by museums, and money.
Reporters dreaming that it's not about science jobs.
Microelectronics in it's present form would not exist without the massive amount of Cold War defense spending that was allocated to develop the technology. By big governments. AT&T would be content with us having landlines and leasing telephone sets they own.
They are complaining that the value of dino bones are rising because of wealthy collectors.
But what they don't realize is that if value increases, there will be a harder push for more supply (more digs are likely to be funded).
Libertas in infinitum
It's no more than a grab by paleontologists wanting to keep the plebs out of 'their' playground. Just read up on the T rex Sue to learn the motives and actions of museums trying to take things from people who find and extract them from their own property.
"misleading because the naming of new species is governed by the rules of the International Code of Nomenclature." Says who?
And yeah, that BS about politics mentioned by other replier. They can basically say the sun is a planet and presto, books say it's a planet, and you're ignorant to believe that it's a star. Not that they'd do this exact example, but you can see what happens when they pick 'winners' based on nationality or which university someone was (not) at.
Most people aren't aware but major (underground) geological formations have different names depending on the state or even county because they were discovered in pieces and then later found to be parts of the same thing. This is funny in the mining and oil industries. :D
For some reason I'm thinking of the "We Say So" corporation on Dinosaurs show. Given that this article is about... haha
I found it fascinating to learn that there are more, nearly an order of magnitude more, un-processed vertebrate fossils sitting wrapped in plaster and straw in wooden crates than there are cleaned and in the hands of collectors and museums.
Instead of choking the trade in these and driving it underground wouldn't it make more sense to work on the supply side issues?
No disrespect, but paleontologists are cheap. $200k for a skull will pay for a whole lot of science.
That the governement would force you not to make your own of, and to not make your own competing wireless service for. This is the old canard about how somehow corporations aren't just government junior.
So you're thinking still sell them to the highest bidder, the change would be you need a PhD to bid?
> it wouldn't be hard to find a mechanism for distribution.
Sure, you can distribute them by leaving them on the curb and someone will pick them up.
Distributing each one to the "most deserving" person, for somebody's opinion of most deserving, is a more interesting question. If one proposes to shut down the current distribution channels and replace it with one that is "better", I'd expect the person proposing that to state which "better" mechanism they want to switch to.
That's funny. The endangered species list definitely does a good of making sure people are quiet about finding any on their property. Just discreetly get rid of them and make sure nobody ever finds out they were there.
I agree, you definitely have serious problem with evolution. Inbreeding ++
Where in the article did it specify they aren't attempting to do all of the above?
Of course, it's entirely obvious that if you don't attempt to control the buy side, you'll not have much luck on the sell side, either. For example, if you don't squeeze equally hard on both sides, someone—likely someone such as yourself—will immediately point this discrepancy out on an internal mailing list, to justify flipping the bird at The Inconsistent Man upstairs.
Returning to planet earth, usually internal discipline is handled by internal communications. Rare does a director achieve lengthy tenure after leaking to the press "our professional society is riddled with stinking, dirty rats".
You must be an eternal rage kitten if you go around parsing everything you read through such a tiny gun slit.
they are missing out. Palaeontologists could make a handsome sum for consulting. Universities could authenticate fossils for a fee... collector gets a shiny certificate and the department can fund another dig. Win win.
If fossil sales become illegal... guess what happens when a construction team finds a fossil? Do they call the local university, halt construction and wait weeks for it to be dealt with? No, Bruce is called over with his air hammer and given a twenty to make quick work of it on the hush. Local rancher finds a T-Rex but can't get anything but bureaucratic grief for it? Hide it in the brush and tell no one.
... I thought it was impossible to ban things, and that you are just increasing the profits and carnage with your War on Fossils?
They have top men researching these fossils.
Who?
Top . . . men.
We will buy and sell freely and they have no say in the matter. It's not Ivory of some endangered species. It's a species that has long been extinct.
Maybe it's time for the free market to call for a stop to paleontology
yes, but those digs would just sell straight to the collectors and the scientists see neither bones nor dollars
horror vacui
I actually do have credentials, but not in biology or paleontology.
You're missing the point, a person could buy a fossil and name it. A large group of people or a government can make a name too (and some have). However, I'm not suggesting ignoring the Nomenclature if one were to write scientific papers or reference books. Everyone else can, however. You'll find the locals around you have all kinds of common names for birds, bugs and other critters. It's the same thing, they don't have to listen to the Congress either.