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

Re: Work WITH collectors, not against them

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Work WITH collectors, not against them

[Spamalope]

Yep. You could meet the stated goal by requiring that digs allow paleontologists to extract the fossils, record and study the material surrounding the fossil and measure/study the fossil after removal. All limited to reasonable time spans.

i.e. Require allowing access by paleontologists at their expense provided that they work with reasonable speed (don't slow walk the process deliberately, or starve it for workers). The trade off being the paleontologists do the extraction promptly in exchange for study access. Once the fossils have been studied their scientific value has been extracted. (presumably important examples would be 3d scanned so the originals aren't needed for future comparisons) Time limit the process so that the private owners aren't unduly deprived of the fossils. That way the private owner gets free quality preparation of the fossils in exchange for a reasonable delay so that there isn't incentive to avoid the process.

Re:This is proposed periodically.

[Oligonicella]

And this:

The commodification is in principle inappropriate because it motivates unscrupulous people.

is particularly ironic. Paleontologists are themselves pretty unscrupulous people.

Data Point:

[ElizabethGreene]

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.