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."

Comments

They can keep the fossils

[Khyber]

I just want the gemified/agatized bone. That shit is awesome looking when cut and polished.

Re:Museums aren't much better

[physicsphairy]

About 20 million artifacts were destroyed just this past September when the National Museum of Brazil went up in flames. I expect even more have been decimated in the museums and historical displays targeted by ISIS. Unless it's a nuclear bunker, collecting everything you want to save in a single spot is not necessarily a great idea for preserving it all. Not to mention that, in general, museums have to deal with a lot of theft and vandalism. Many hugely significant artifacts have simply disappeared. Maybe just because of bad bookkeeping, maybe something more nefarious.

Packing artifacts in creates might be better than handing them out as souvenirs to passing tourists, but I don't think it's better than letting people who can afford state-of-the-art security and fire suppressant systems make them their prized possessions. The real risk to these artifacts is being insufficiently valued by society in general. That's when they will be disposed, put in insufficiently safe storage (government funded or not), or even ground up to make "medicine." Historical artifacts selling for millions may not match with the socially enlightened future imagined by Star Trek, but it's an awful lot better than many more likely alternatives.