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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.
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
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
"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.
Let's just put them on the endangered species list.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
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
I heard if you snorted ground-up dinosaur fossil, it was an aphrodisiac. All these scientists just want to keep the good stuff for themselves. Hurry up and buy your stash now, before it goes black market.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
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.
Don't use fancy words. 'Aphrodisiac.' Nah. They're Chinese Boner Pills. They grind up animal parts to make boner pills.
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.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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.