ABSTRACT
There have been curators and students of palaeontology since the science's beginnings, and there have been professional collectors of, and dealers in, fossils for just as long. The relationship between these academic and commercial worlds has, therefore, been difficult for two hundred years. Plus t;a change. Recent imports from developing countries of world-class 'firsts' in vertebrate palaeontology give us some new and truly important specimens to argue about. What should curators do in these circumstances? Do international and UK laws help? Does the law understand the real world of science?
