Ethics of Fossil Collecting

[FossilDAWG]

No cars are not searched when you drive from Alberta to British Columbia or Saskatchewan.  However if someone in Canada is selling dinosaur fossils such fossils could only come from Alberta (within Canada).  No dinosaurs in Quebec or Ontario for example.  Anyway, selling such fossils or bringing them out of the country without a permit is a violation of federal law as well as the law in most provinces.  Ontario doesn't regulate sale or removal of the vast majority of invertebrate fossils, but most provinces have heritage laws that forbid removing all fossils, though it is uncertain if they would invoke such laws for common invertebrates.  On the other hand in Nova Scotia even residents are forbidden to collect anything no matter how common so selling fossils is right out.

 

As far as enforcement is concerned, I have heard that Alberta monitors online sites, and I have also heard that they check out shows such as Tucson, at least occasionally.  Several years ago a commercial dealer was caught selling fish and ichthyosaurs from a Triassic site in British Columbia.

 

Don

 

 

[Scylla]

So you can dig a latrine on your land in Alberta, but if a dinosaur bone comes up you have to put it back? Do commercial mines get to sell their products and do they have to pay the people of Alberta for mining licenses? I think the answer is yes, but I ask to be sure. Maybe Alberta can sell fossiling rights like mining rights. I know you think that poachers will just claim the fossils they are selling/exporting are from licensed sites but that can happen with minerals too. Certification programs with blockchain technology for security can be placed to track specimens as well.

 

Also, a pet peeve of mine is claiming "cultural heritage" for fossils that predate culture. Sorry, your ancestors did not have anything to do with that trilobite. Okay, maybe they hunted that mammoth, or used a Megalodon tooth as an amulet, but come on, every fossil in your country is part of your "culture"? I think this practice comes from a fundamental lack of appreciation of the nature of deep time. Or misunderstanding the meaning of culture. 

[Kane]

1 hour ago, Scylla said:

So you can dig a latrine on your land in Alberta, but if a dinosaur bone comes up you have to put it back?

No, it can be held in trust, but it cannot be sold or taken out of the province. 

[Scylla]

46 minutes ago, Kane said:

No, it can be held in trust, but it cannot be sold or taken out of the province. 

got it.

[jdp]

12 hours ago, Scylla said:

So you can dig a latrine on your land in Alberta, but if a dinosaur bone comes up you have to put it back?

 

You can hold it in trust but you cannot sell it.

12 hours ago, Scylla said:

 

Do commercial mines get to sell their products and do they have to pay the people of Alberta for mining licenses? I think the answer is yes, but I ask to be sure.

No, with the sole exception of gem-quality ammonites ("ammolite").

 

12 hours ago, Scylla said:

 

Maybe Alberta can sell fossiling rights like mining rights. I know you think that poachers will just claim the fossils they are selling/exporting are from licensed sites but that can happen with minerals too. Certification programs with blockchain technology for security can be placed to track specimens as well.

I'm not really sure how blockchain serves as a solution here. The real issue is that most Albertans prefer the current state of affairs.

 

 

12 hours ago, Scylla said:

Also, a pet peeve of mine is claiming "cultural heritage" for fossils that predate culture. Sorry, your ancestors did not have anything to do with that trilobite. Okay, maybe they hunted that mammoth, or used a Megalodon tooth as an amulet, but come on, every fossil in your country is part of your "culture"? I think this practice comes from a fundamental lack of appreciation of the nature of deep time. Or misunderstanding the meaning of culture. 

Albertans generally believe that dinosaurs found in Alberta should belong to the people of Alberta. Albertans don't want them being sold off to multimillionares in Silicon Valley and they don't want them being shipped off to museums abroad. The limitations on export are in fact extended even to scientists; it is nearly impossible even for researchers at other Canadian museums to get permission to take those specimens to their own museums. There is in fact some conflict about this, because researchers out east do a lot of fieldwork in Alberta, but those fossils have to stay here in Alberta museums.

[DPS Ammonite]

10 minutes ago, jdp said:

Albertans generally believe that dinosaurs found in Alberta should belong to the people of Alberta.

Thankfully Alberta does not claim peaches as cultural heritage items otherwise we would not have canned and some fresh peaches.

 

Kidding aside, does Alberta allow for any fossils to be loaned to other museums out of the country for display; sort of like how China loans out Panda Bears?

[dinosaur man]

2 hours ago, jdp said:

Albertans generally believe that dinosaurs found in Alberta should belong to the people of Alberta. Albertans don't want them being sold off to multimillionares in Silicon Valley and they don't want them being shipped off to museums abroad. The limitations on export are in fact extended even to scientists; it is nearly impossible even for researchers at other Canadian museums to get permission to take those specimens to their own museums. There is in fact some conflict about this, because researchers out east do a lot of fieldwork in Alberta, but those fossils have to stay here in Alberta museums.

This is all because museums outside of Canada and Alberta  during the Canadian dinosaur rush kept over collecting so much so that it was limiting collecting areas.  This is why the Royal Tyrell Museum was built and the Sternbergs where hired.

[dinosaur man]

15 hours ago, Scylla said:

Maybe Alberta can sell fossiling rights like mining rights. I know you think that poachers will just claim the fossils they are selling/exporting are from licensed sites but that can happen with minerals too. Certification programs with blockchain technology for security can be placed to track specimens as well.

I think this is a good idea, as Alberta has the most strict fossils laws in Canada and one of the most strict in the world!  So maybe this can allow collecting and keeping the fossils only if you have a permit and make it easier for scientists to collect and do research!

[jdp]

2 hours ago, DPS Ammonite said:

Thankfully Alberta does not claim peaches as cultural heritage items otherwise we would not have canned and some fresh peaches.

 

Kidding aside, does Alberta allow for any fossils to be loaned to other museums out of the country for display; sort of like how China loans out Panda Bears?

Fossils get loaned all the time for research purposes. Museums also frequently organize traveling exhibits. No reason to think they couldn't and my assumption is that they very well might if the right exhibit was planned. The issue is transfer of ownership of fossils.

[jdp]

32 minutes ago, dinosaur man said:

This is all because museums outside of Canada and Alberta  during the Canadian dinosaur rush kept over collecting so much so that it was limiting collecting areas.  This is why the Royal Tyrell Museum was built and the Sternbergs where hired.

You might have some of the history wrong here. The Sternbergs did their collecting in the late 19th and early 20th century and sent fossils to most of the major museums in North America and Europe. That's why there are major collections of Alberta fossils at the American Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie, the ROM, the CMN, etc. The Royal Tyrrell Museum was founded in the 1980s, long, long after the Sternbergs did their collecting, with the goal of building local expertise and bringing in tourism to areas which were hard hit when coal ceased to be economically viable in the province.

[dinosaur man]

17 minutes ago, jdp said:

You might have some of the history wrong here. The Sternbergs did their collecting in the late 19th and early 20th century and sent fossils to most of the major museums in North America and Europe. That's why there are major collections of Alberta fossils at the American Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie, the ROM, the CMN, etc. The Royal Tyrrell Museum was founded in the 1980s, long, long after the Sternbergs did their collecting, with the goal of building local expertise and bringing in tourism to areas which were hard hit when coal ceased to be economically viable in the province.

I heard that to many fossils where leaving Canada, mostly due to Brown which is why they hired the Sternbergs?  And that they also founded the Royal Tyrell because of tourism and to have a place in Alberta where they could keep there fossils, as the people of Alberta where mad due to not having a spot to view there provinces fossils, but instead  having to go to other places to see Alberta fossils, that’s if I’m right?

[musicnfossils]

On 2020-05-27 at 11:55 AM, FossilDAWG said:

However, if the law was to change to allow people to sell such fossils, as musicnfossils suggests, I'm quite confident that it would not take long before it would be almost impossible for anyone to find anything.  People with no interest in fossils except for money would scour every square foot of productive ground, plus I am sure quite a bit of illegal excavation would occur.

 

I fail to see why illegal excavation would increase by allowing sale while still maintaining the anti-excavation law. The excavated fossils would still be illegal. It seems to me that law-breakers don’t generally have a tendency to be cool with breaking one law but not two. 

[dinosaur man]

I just found out that they might make Alberta’s fossil laws less restrictive.  As said before it’s even hard for researchers collecting in Alberta, I heard that Donald Henderson of the Royal Tyrell Museum is making a petition to make fossil laws in Alberta less restrictive!

[dinosaur man]

17 hours ago, Scylla said:

Also, a pet peeve of mine is claiming "cultural heritage" for fossils that predate culture. Sorry, your ancestors did not have anything to do with that trilobite. Okay, maybe they hunted that mammoth, or used a Megalodon tooth as an amulet, but come on, every fossil in your country is part of your "culture"? I think this practice comes from a fundamental lack of appreciation of the nature of deep time. Or misunderstanding the meaning of culture. 

Just searched up the meaning of culture, fossils definitely are not cultural!  Meaning: the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.

[RuMert]

Extracted and especially prepared fossils could become culture though

[Kane]

5 hours ago, dinosaur man said:

Just searched up the meaning of culture, fossils definitely are not cultural!  Meaning: the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.

That is a single, lexical, definition of culture. If that was all there was to it, there would not be an entire disciplinary body known as cultural studies where there are broader, narrower, and competing definitions of the term and how it applies in a variety of contexts.

[Scylla]

44 minutes ago, Kane said:

That is a single, lexical, definition of culture. If that was all there was to it, there would not be an entire disciplinary body known as cultural studies where there are broader, narrower, and competing definitions of the term and how it applies in a variety of contexts.

Well, anything can mean anything if you start changing the meaning of words

7 hours ago, musicnfossils said:

 

I fail to see why illegal excavation would increase by allowing sale while still maintaining the anti-excavation law. The excavated fossils would still be illegal. It seems to me that law-breakers don’t generally have a tendency to be cool with breaking one law but not two. 

Having legal fossils gives "cover" for the illegal ones to be sold. An example is ivory trading. Making all ivory illegal to sell greatly streamlines enforcement. If some Albertan fossils are legal to sell, then enforcement becomes more difficult. Blockchain would give a technological solution to tagging the legal fossils that is difficult to counterfeit.

 

11 hours ago, jdp said:

You can hold it in trust but you cannot sell it.

No, with the sole exception of gem-quality ammonites ("ammolite").

 

I'm not really sure how blockchain serves as a solution here. The real issue is that most Albertans prefer the current state of affairs.

 

 

Albertans generally believe that dinosaurs found in Alberta should belong to the people of Alberta. 

In reverse order:

But I thought they belong to "the crown"? Last I checked that was on the head of some English person not living in Alberta.

 

Blockchain allows you to tag the fossils with a unique and difficult to copy number. Whether you allow export or not, the tag can help track the item.

 

So all those coal mines could take the coal from the people of Alberta for free? Wow, that's surprisingly generous.

 

Thanks Kane cleared that up for me. Now, why can't I hold it in trust in my living room? (My living room is in New York)

 

Oh wow! We have new emoticons too!

 

[Kane]

6 minutes ago, Scylla said:

Well, anything can mean anything if you start changing the meaning of words

 

 

Well, not quite. There is some rigour and rules for terminological changes in many of the non-science disciplines. Changes or additions to definition and scope are not made and accepted arbitrarily, but require argumentation and consensus.

[Scylla]

1 minute ago, Kane said:

Well, not quite. There is some rigour and rules for terminological changes in many of the non-science disciplines. Changes in definition and scope are not made and accepted arbitrarily, but require argumentation and consensus.

I do not doubt what you say, but I doubt that the same institutions that make these laws undertake that level of scholarship. They do not seem to understand the difference between rare and common fossils, they have very little insight into many scientific subtleties as evidenced by many of their actions. I am not denigrating them, their expertise lies in the law mostly, not in science or the humanities. So I will hold that the definition of culture they can use is the same one most of us use, i.e. the dictionary definition. Academics are allowed to use whatever definition they have reached consensus on.

[FossilDAWG]

Museums are cultural.  They are centers for learning for the general public and also provide opportunities for training and research opportunities for graduate students and professionals.  They also attract tourists and provide an economic benefit to the local area.  A vigorous research program brings in grants that pay salaries that flow to the local economy as people pay rent and buy groceries etc.

 

A museum with nothing to display won't do any of those things.  Albertans at one time had to travel to Washington, New York, Munich, or later on Ottawa or Toronto to see Alberta dinosaurs.  None of the economic, cultural, or educational benefits of those dinosaurs and other Alberta fossils were being realized in Alberta.  Those other museums were not breaking any laws (as far as I know) as no laws regulated removal of such fossils from the province or the country.  Alberta decided to make sure those resources, which came from Alberta, benefited Albertans.  That was their right.

 

Times change.  At one time European museums and wealthy collectors roamed the world, stripping archeological treasures such as the "Elgin marbles".  Intellectual property was taken too.  Not long ago researchers could go to the Amazon (as one example), find out what plants indigenous peoples used in their traditional medicine, take the plants back to their American or European labs, purify the active ingredients, turn them into drugs, patent them, and commercialize them.  Hundreds of generations of patient experimentation by indigenous people, trying different plants extracted or prepared different ways (some are used as topical poultices, some as oral teas for example), would routinely be stolen, with all the benefit going to wealthy first world societies.  Across the world the response has been for countries to pass laws, often draconian laws, to protect their resources and ensure their resources are used to benefit their own people.

 

Don

[Kane]

13 minutes ago, Scylla said:

I do not doubt what you say, but I doubt that the same institutions that make these laws undertake that level of scholarship. They do not seem to understand the difference between rare and common fossils, they have very little insight into many scientific subtleties as evidenced by many of their actions. I am not denigrating them, their expertise lies in the law mostly, not in science or the humanities. So I will hold that the definition of culture they can use is the same one most of us use, i.e. the dictionary definition. Academics are allowed to use whatever definition they have reached consensus on.

Definitely. The requirement for legal definition is that it can be uniformly and consistently applied, making extensive use of precedent to function analogically, leaving not as much room for interpretation (and thus challenges!). Sadly, the subtleties may be missed, sacrificed, or simply require too much effort to revise as that may mean revision of statutes — and that is a heavy lift! The wheels of the law grind finely, but slowly. This makes it exceptionally challenging for the laws to be applied when terms and technologies change!

 

Laws certainly have to balance benefits and harms, and that is not as simple as it may seem when there are competing interests when it comes to asking cui bono?

[FossilDAWG]

The conflict between word meanings that I most love to hate is the legal application of "artifact" to fossils.  Less egregious but also quite harmful is the application of "antiquities" to fossils.  Such loose language ensures that the most common fossil is afforded the same legal protection as the rarest archeological treasure.

 

Don

[jdp]

2 hours ago, Scylla said:

In reverse order:

But I thought they belong to "the crown"? Last I checked that was on the head of some English person not living in Alberta.

 

The Crown is a complicated legal framework in Canada, because technically all Canadians are subject to the Queen but at the same time Canada is fully independent. But the effect of it is that property in Canada is not the same as property in the US. Many other countries have this sort of arrangement; for example, most land "purchases" in Israel are 99 year leases, not actual purchases.

 

2 hours ago, Scylla said:

Blockchain allows you to tag the fossils with a unique and difficult to copy number. Whether you allow export or not, the tag can help track the item.

 

Unless you physically append the number to the fossil, tracking that would be very hard.

 

2 hours ago, Scylla said:

So all those coal mines could take the coal from the people of Alberta for free? Wow, that's surprisingly generous.

 

No, resource companies both pay leases and royalties to the province and/or federal government. Much of the Alberta budget comes from royalties from oil production.

 

2 hours ago, Scylla said:

Thanks Kane cleared that up for me. Now, why can't I hold it in trust in my living room? (My living room is in New York)

 

Because the Alberta government does not have sovereignty over your living room.

[jdp]

2 hours ago, Scylla said:

I do not doubt what you say, but I doubt that the same institutions that make these laws undertake that level of scholarship. They do not seem to understand the difference between rare and common fossils, they have very little insight into many scientific subtleties as evidenced by many of their actions. I am not denigrating them, their expertise lies in the law mostly, not in science or the humanities. So I will hold that the definition of culture they can use is the same one most of us use, i.e. the dictionary definition. Academics are allowed to use whatever definition they have reached consensus on.

As stated previously, Alberta has provisions for disposition of fossils out of public trust and into private ownership. Those disposition applications are assessed by experts in Alberta paleontology.

[taj]

Quote

The Crown is a complicated legal framework in Canada, because technically all Canadians are subject to the Queen but at the same time Canada is fully independent. 

Well , that is for sure an interesting conversation topic to throw out , here in Quebec !