ABSTRACT
Like scattered signs on the surface of the earth that signal a buried cache of dinosaur bones, the society’s resolution and Baucus’ bill are surface manifestations of an enmity that has disrupted the once-amicable relations between professional paleontologists and those who collect old bones for profit [note in the UK dealers are often referred to, confusingly, as ‘professional collectors’]. The researchers complain that they are being driven away from choice sites – and out of the market – by a fad that has made dinosaur relics as desirable in the world of collectibles as paintings by Van Gogh. The result, say the academics, is that the public is losing choice pieces of its prehistoric heritage – data needed to understand such things as what the consequences of greenhouse warming might be. The commercial collectors, on the other hand, argue that they’re just as entitled to the fossils as anyone else, and that they and their clients get real pleasure out of their collections, whereas any bone that becomes an academic find is likely to wind up at the back of some dusty museum drawer. They also fear that protective legislation for fossils on public land might one day be extended to private lands, as is the case in the dinosaur-rich province of Alberta, where all fossils belong to the government.
