The super-rich are buying up dinosaur bones – and now they want our near-perfect Stegosaurus
Last month it was announced that a newly discovered skeleton of the iconic dinosaur Stegosaurus would be up for auction, with an expected sale price of about $6m (£4.7m). In many countries (or parts of them), it is entirely legal to dig up, and buy or sell fossils – including exporting them. However, most palaeontologists consider these to be scientific objects and as such worthy of protection, and would understandably prefer to see them not with private collectors but in museums, where they would be protected and available for study.
Although public collections do buy fossils when they can afford them (the Duelling Dinosaurs specimen recently went to North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences after a charity fundraising campaign), most of them are simply unaffordable. Museums cannot spend millions on every dinosaur skull that comes up for auction, which means that scientifically important fossils appear briefly on the auction house website and in the media and then vanish into a collector’s house, never to be seen again. And there are many that don’t even make it to public auction.
But does science have the right to claim a monopoly on such finds? Should countries or regions change their laws to reflect this? Surely private landowners have the rights to things found on their property?
No matter your opinions on private v public ownership, it’s impossible to ignore the effect of the fossil trade as it inevitably encourages illegal excavation and export from countries that have banned such sales. The media attention given to each new high-ticket skeleton that goes on sale, and TV shows such as Dino Hunters, which focus on the dollar value of each bone found have only added fuel to the fire. There are ethical private collectors who donate material to museums, or offer them at discounted prices and work with them – but there are many others who do not.
There have been plenty of high-profile cases with specimens collected and transported illegally, and only a few of these are found or repatriated. When single specimens can go for millions, then it is inevitable that criminals will exploit weak borders. At the moment, we don’t expect the average customs inspector to know about state, national or international laws on rocks or fossils in addition to their efforts against more common and pressing kinds of smuggling.
As a palaeontologist, it’s depressing to be on a dig and constantly finding smashed bones where poachers have destroyed a skull to rip out the valuable teeth, or go to a trade show and see rows of specimens from countries that have a strict and outright ban on any excavations or exports. Even specimens that have been traded legally have come under scrutiny for containing too few original bones (incomplete skeletons are often supplemented with replacement bones cast from other specimens), and I have seen some odd and perhaps exaggerated claims made about fossils that are up for sale.
The irony is that these claims are unverified and unstudied by scientists precisely because the material is in private hands, and unavailable for research. That gives some a creative licence to hype up the fossil and claim that it resolves some scientific question or is the first record of some feature or condition, but it’s done to boost the price and in a further irony makes it more unlikely that it would be affordable for any museum.
Not every fossil is scientifically valuable. Many things like small ammonites and shark teeth, or small fragments of bones, are so numerous that scientists can access thousands if they need to do so. But thousands are of incredible valuable, and many are vanishing into private hands. Even if you are firmly behind the idea that this is all fine and that’s how markets work, it’s surely hard to condone the illegal trade in the property of other countries that goes on.
Even when material is confiscated and repatriated, it can be of very limited value. There’s no information (or none trustworthy) on exactly where it came from and so how old it is, what other finds come from there, or how the specimen was treated before it reached a museum. So even recovering illegally traded fossils does little for science.
It’s hard to see any of this stopping any time soon. And it’s also hard not to be sad seeing incredible fossils that could contribute to the world’s knowledge about this planet and its history being advertised for their scientific value when they will most likely end up in a Silicon Valley office.
Fossils are a finite resource of unknown extent. We might never dig up another Stegosaurus, or never find one nearly as big or complete as this, and museums are not usually able to find millions of dollars at short notice. Even if this one does end up in a public collection, it will be unusual in that regard. It’s not hard to feel the frustration of a scientist watching a prize palaeontological find up for sale.
Dr David Hone is a reader in zoology at Queen Mary, University of London, specialising in dinosaurs and pterosaurs
cupboards with plastic wrappers for “art” projects. Soon, my extensive range of Marmite jars took over the kitchen. It felt ungrateful to relieve myself of unwanted gifts, so I kept everything. Entire walls were filled with framed pictures, shelves packed with curios – some of which I didn’t even like.
In her response to a photo of the teeth I had found, my sister gently used the word “hoarding”. I was aghast. Hoarders are the people you see in sensationalist documentaries, where some poor man has to crawl into his home due to the amount of stuff in it. My things were nicely organised and interesting – if I was an aristocrat it would simply be eccentric, I thought. Friends in large houses with garages and outbuildings had far more stuff than I owned. Still, I looked up the term. Mental health charity Mind’s summary was both unsettling and reassuring: “You should arrange or dispose of things perfectly or not at all”, “You won’t cope with how you’ll feel if you throw things away” and, excruciatingly, “Someone who doesn’t recognise they have a hoarding problem might call themselves a ‘collector’”. That last one was a low blow. What about my Brownie badge?
It might have started when I kept a scribbled-down score from a momentous game of Uno or bought a fridge magnet from a souvenir shop, but my practice of collecting was undoubtedly stoked by traumatic experiences that happened to me in between those happy moments. Hoarding is still a relatively unexplored area of mental health, partly because it often presents alongside other conditions, like bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and anxiety. It may be the case that the hoarding can only be addressed once other symptoms have been treated, because, like all mental illnesses, it requires a challenging level of acceptance and selfreporting. I had developed an unconscious belief that I could only remember nice times if I had a visual prompt. During happy periods, I clung on to every receipt, stub and cutting to keep me safe. Somewhere along the way, the collector had lost control of the collection.
The tidying up, when it started, happened in stages. The first time I filled the black bin with a carefully cleaned jars – kept for decades in case I ever added to my button collection – I cried. I woke when the collection came the next morning, suppressing the urge to run after the lorry containing my wonderful treasures. I stopped looking on Freecycle and started saying no when people offered things I didn’t really need – or even want. I sold my collection of Marmite jars for a surprisingly high amount on eBay, and I learned to accept that sometimes, though it is painful, not everything can be recycled.
I received such a beautiful welcome from my local Oxfam when I went there for the first time, laden with bags and emotion, that my weekly visit became something to look forward to rather than dread, the kind manager allowing me to empty out the bag for one last look when I needed it, which was often. A year into this journey and I have got rid of a third of my possessions – including the teeth. I’ll never be able to condense everything I own into just a few boxes, like nomads do, but I feel freer and healthier. Just don’t ask me to tell you about photosynthesis.
Claire Jackson is a journalist who writes about classical music, art and animals