Ethics of Fossil Collecting

[dinosaur man]

10 hours ago, dinosaur man said:

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!

This might change fossil collecting in Alberta!

[jdp]

57 minutes ago, taj said:

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

Yeah, it's weird for me too, as a non-Canadian living in Canada. As far as I can tell, the Crown exists today as a legal kludge for public trust in a manner which places the public trust above the level of any given government. I also know that land ownership is a little different out east where some property ownership is actual ownership rather than long-term land leases, which makes everything a little weirder. And, technically, Metis and Indigenous peoples have treaty lands which are NOT ultimately owned by the Crown, but in many cases these lands are still settled by non-native Canadian communities. The whole thing is pretty complex in ways that land ownership is not complex in the US.

 

Also the queen is all over the money.

[jdp]

24 minutes ago, dinosaur man said:

This might change fossil collecting in Alberta!

Any change, even if successful, is unlikely to permit unsupervised sale or export of Alberta fossils. What it likely will do is better delineate small personal collections of surface-collected fossils as protected activity.

[Malcolmt]

On 2020-05-27 at 11:31 PM, FossilDAWG said:

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

 

 

Even for Ontario an invertebrate fossil with a value of over $500 requires an  export permit to remove it from Canada. In Ontario you are allowed 25 pounds of material from one location provided it is legal to collect there