Who owns dinosaur bones

Rogue excavations have been compared to removing a homicide victim from a crime scene without logging the kind of data that might help an investigator solve the case. In the case of fossil dinosaurs those questions would include: Where and when and under what circumstances were the bones found?

How deep? Which bones were present? In what pattern? Was other fossil evidence present, like other animals? How about plants? Were there bite marks? Evidence of bone breaks? Hints about offspring? Hints about weather? RCL: Can you talk a little bit about the positives and negatives of Jurassic Park as this iconic cultural touchstone.

Has it inspired people? Has it encouraged more collecting? How has it affected prices of dinosaur fossils? To what extent that global interest benefits science: good question. I can make a case that paleontology is as significant as anything in this world because of its ability to get kids into science. RCL: What do you think is the major takeaway for affluent collectors who want to ethically acquire fossils?

Naturally, other T. Around 50 partial skeletons have been uncovered, so studies of the dinosaur will still continue. But what worries paleontologists most is how this sale may have private land owners seeing dollar signs when they find fossils on their land.

While governments from Alberta, Canada, to Mongolia have natural history heritage laws that protect significant fossils wherever they are found, the United States is different. A rancher who stumbles on a Triceratops eroding out of a hill on their property can dig it up, call a museum, sell off individual pieces, or even smash the bones depending on their wishes.

While commercial collectors have been a part of paleontology since the midth century, the Sue debacle upended everything.

Initially found in , Sue was embroiled in controversy almost as soon as the dinosaur was out of the ground. Williams disputed that the payment was for excavation permission rather than ownership, and other parties from the Sioux to the United States Department of the Interior claimed ownership of the dinosaur.

The FBI raided the Black Hills Institute to take possession of the bones in , the fossils becoming part of a drawn-out legal case that raised additional charges of fossil-collecting malfeasance.

Private citizens are allowed to collect these "for personal use in reasonable quantities" on federal land without a permit. However, any fossils taken from federally owned rock "may not be bartered or sold" later. Note that special rules may apply to certain remains and locations. For example, it's a misdemeanor to collect petrified wood in Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park.

If you've got any questions about the rules in your area, please get in touch with the closest BLM office. Privately held land is a horse of a very different color. In countries like Mongolia, dinosaur fossils are considered to be part of the nation's shared cultural heritage — regardless of where they were found.

As such, they can't be sold in private markets, and personal ownership of these remains is against the law. But in America, fossils discovered on private property belong to the landowner. So if you, as a resident of the United States, find a dino skeleton on real estate that you own, you can legally keep, sell or export it.

The question is, should you? The carnivorous dino that just changed hands in Paris was excavated from private land between and Upon learning that Aguttes planned to auction it off, the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology wrote an open letter begging the organization to cancel the sale. Aguttes sold it anyway.

In other cases, fossil hunting on private lands means important fossils become interior decoration rather than science. Cavigelli gets most of his specimens from digs on private land, for instance.

But Carr has done some back-of-the-envelope calculations of how paleontology on private land affects access to Tyrannosaurus rex specimens. In a recent study he did on T. For example: Should scientists pay landowners? In one case, a mammoth was worth a tax write-off. In another, Cavigelli paid a landowner for a T.