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

Aren't Paleontologists Selling Them

[ranton]

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?

Re:Museums aren't much better

[kbonin]

This. Over 99% of all fossils are piled in boxes in storage rooms at universities and museums. Be nice if there was a way for scientists and collectors to coexist peacefully. Hoarding a cool skeleton in a mansion somewhere is less valuable than a museum display, but hiding it in boxes in a warehouse only accessible to one or two departments isn't much better.

Re:Museums aren't much better

[drinkypoo]

Never mind that many of these fossils sit in the archives of a museum lost and forgotten for years.

If they're sitting there, then they can be dug up (so to speak) later and research done on them. If they're in private collections, this is much harder, and they're more likely to be destroyed or damaged.

Re: Work WITH collectors, not against them

[ranton]

Fantasy. Rich people want to own rare items for themselves, not on display. Private digs prevent proper time for study, identification and even proper removal practices. Worse, without the context of the nearby rocks, revelant knowledge about the ecosystem is made impossible.

I doubt museums are primarily interested in these fossils for display; they want them for research purposes. If there was more collaboration then perhaps more paleontologists would be informed early enough in the dig process to gather the relevant information from the dig site. Or be involved in the dig in the first place.

Re:Work WITH collectors, not against them

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

After Mr or Ms Wealthypants passes on, or earlier even, the dino is almost certain to be given or permanently loaned to a museum somewhere.

In the meantime, new species are still being "discovered" in the warehouses stocked with fossils dug up by Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh in the 1800's, like Tylosaurus kansasensis.

I'd suggest patience to the scientists. Dino has been sitting atound for millions of years, a few more decades won't matter too much.