Why Do We Collect Fossils?

[Wrangellian]

I'm just curious as to what members would give as their reasons for their hobby/obsession, other than "because we're crazy" or "something to do".. I suppose I'll get as many different reasons as replies, and I can think of a few already, but the reason I ask is because I'm thinking about where my collection should eventually end up and whether I should start high-grading it and disposing of my lesser stuff and how. I'm not quite ready to get rid of them all yet but maybe I need to start thinking about it instead of just blindly accumulating...

The hill where I'm doing most of my collecting lately is a recovery effort, a race against time as the site will be developed soon. I've got more than 550 individual specimens from there so far - mind you many of them are small and will fit inside a 1" box. But I am running out of room to put them. Maybe I should start to be more selective about what I take home, but I know some 'experts' who will collect even the more common/unimpressive things just for the sake of science, and I also can't help but collect every 1/2 clam I find as long as it is identifiable, but at what point does it become OCD instead of a scientific recovery effort?

Also, as a member of the local Paleo. Society we are encouraged to donate specimens to the RBCM (Royal BC Museum) but as a collector I am torn: The museum should rightfully house all the best/most important specimens, but if I donated only my better specimens my collection will not be so impressive, plus my numbering system/catalog that I have been diligently maintaining will be broken up - maybe they are more valuable as a collection than a bunch of individual specimens? (for any potential scientific statistical surveys and such).. I could donate the whole shebang but the museum is running out of room, and I wonder if my efforts would be worth it anyway (they might not see the light of day/publication until after I'm dead). The Society doesn't allow members to sell fossils, but if I could sell off my 'spares', and keep (and eventually donate to the RBCM) my better stuff, I could better sustain my hobby. [i don't collect with the aim of making money, but I don't have a lot of money and this would surely help at least a bit.] I could quit the Soc. and go that route, (and maybe lose some respect among the local paleo community), or I could trade some 'spares' away but I would end up with the same number of fossils and lack of room....

I don't know. I can't see any other options but I can't tell which of the above is the best. Do I need to even worry about this or does it eventually sort itself out? (haha, yeah right) Am I putting too much importance on one thing and not enough on another? Opinions welcomed. Why do you collect and what do you (plan to) do with your fossils?

Thanks for reading if you made it thru..

Edited October 28, 2011 by Wrangellian

[Uncle Siphuncle]

scientific interest, thrill of discovery, individualism sometimes, quality time with son, girlfriend, and friends at other times. quality extras serve as great giveaways on distant fossil itineraries, cementing friendships.

i have fossils in various museums and universities, and it is fun help the grad students. it is fun to stay tied in with the academics as that helps you network to put rare finds in front of the right people the fastest.

every now and then i'm called upon to do a display/ meet and greet with the chamber of commerce or set up a table of my stuff at one of dinosaur george's shows or just give a talk at a school, where i spill out b grade stuff at the end.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

and although i may not be particularly skilled at it, i enjoy prepping my finds and my girlfriend has requested my tutelage in the same.

in summary, for me at least, there is no greater thrill than encountering a hyper productive virgin site. good times!

[Wrangellian]

Thanks for the reply, Dan, I agree it's fun to put them on display but I don't get much opportunity anymore to do so, except for the Society Fossil Fair in March. And I don't want to sever any connections with the experts and I'm sure they dont want to sever with me as I have some important things in my collection, I hope they realize that! The whole idea of the Soc. is to foster interaction btwn experts and amateurs, but I'm not sure how many collectors they expect to join when they put such restrictions on selling, etc. when everyone else in the province is allowed.. but I guess that's another topic.

Just about everything I have needs some prepping and I'd like to be able to do it, but it seems like it would require a huge investment in time/money/practice to become good at it.. maybe I should just leave that to the pros if those stars ever line up.

[lordpiney]

because they're old, and i can move faster than them!

[tracer]

all i know is that combining ocd with some existentialistic mid-life crisis probably isn't good for your digestion, and McRib sandwiches and mini-warehouse storage locations are plentiful at the moment.

[wRick]

Been asking myself this a little bit lately, and, I just love finding them!

I collect shark teeth and they have little or 0 scientific value, I don't display them at home, I don't even own a Riker Mount.

I just enjoy that thrill of finding a nice shark tooth, or whatever, and though I occassionally pull a few out to cuddle/fondle/caress/.... They spend most of their time in shoe boxes in my closet while I plot how to find more/better/bigger/prettier/... of the same.

[mako-mama]

Wrangellian,

I started collecting fossils because it was a (I thought) cheap hobby that could be done close to home. Several thousands of dollars later (microscopes, chemicals, tools, riker mounts, etc.), it certainly isnt cheap.

I understand your situation completely. I too have run out of room after so many years. I have quit collecting. Now I still have a few things to prep, but when they're done, I'm done. Going into the field is strictly a social event now. The prospect of what to do with this collection is pressing. Most museums don't want another box full of bone fragments, sharks teeth or shells, unless you have "new to science" specimens. Our local museum would only use them for gift shop sales. I suppose I could find a likely taker for the amber and marine mammal fossils and perhaps crabs and fish. But that would still leave a load. I do know that if fossils aren't very well documented, no museum has any use for them. They become just rocks in a box to take up valuable room.

Now I discover my fossils on TFF! They only take a bit of monitor space!

[kipper]

Why do I collect? Erm...because fossils are an amazing reminder of previous periods of earth history and carry a certain mystery; how did it live? how/why did it die? What was the environment like then compared to now? Plus they are beautiful in their own right, and who can explain that feeling of being the first person ever, ever, ever to have seen that creature!! Split the rock, slowly part the two halves....and oh well, maybe next time, or YES!!

What will I do with my collection? Well, it's not large as I tend to hang on to few finds for the cabinet, but the ones I keep tend to be decent specimens, but I guess they will eventually be sold or given away depending on my wife's largesse when I'm no longer around!

[Jocky]

I bring home about 1% of what I find then try to research what I find as far as I can. I only bring home something new to my collection.

I have a shark tooth that is so different from the hundreds I have found. I have spent an obscene amount of time on the net trying to identify but as soon as people know it is from Qatar / Eocene they assume Odontaspis / Sand Tiger. I have referenced this tooth against hundreds of examples on the net and I still cant definitively identify to my own satisfaction. My hope is that I never identify it, does that sound odd?

To be honest I have tried to get some experts from museums and such to help identify a find or explain how various things occur in nature but as a group I have found them to be condescending to the point of being rude. So now I just dont bother, why would I when this forum exists?

I have taken lots of people out to the desert in Qatar and have made some very good friends. This week I took some kids out to go fossil hunting for the first time. The kids loved the idea that we had to take safety equipment like spare GPS / gallons of water / compass etc. They found some shark teeth and Gastropod casts and they loved it. They are now looking for shops that sell Indiana Jones outfits and maps to ancient hidden treasure.

Why do I go fossil hunting? I just love it and thats the bottom line.

CHEERS

[Coco]

Hi,

Very interesting question.

Why I look for fossils? Doubtless because it is what what connects us most with our roots, our ancestors. And then the science always interested me, to the point that I just began with minerals and fossils thirty years ago, and today I be also interested in the current sea urchins, in the current sharks (to compare them with fossils), in eggs of selachians failed on beaches(ranges), in the otoliths of current fishes, but also in cactus and in all which is out of the ordinary.

What I like in the hunting in fossils, it is doubtless the adrenalin, as Jack London or Indiana Jones. I like feeling my heart beating when I find things. To be on the ground and to hunt(chase away, go hunting), it is what I prefer. Later, the winter, I clean, I determine, I list (classify), I label... There is a work of the good weather, and the work when we do not go outside.

It is also a moment when I meet alone with myself, free of everything, or on the contrary, a moment shared with friends, and it is also interesting.

Coco

[Terry Dactyll]

All of the above...the moment of discovery, buzzing driving back thinking of bringing them back to life...working on them and then finally enjoy being around when they are finished...

[stratio]

Opportunity to get outside, touch the past, and behold the splendor of creation with wonder and fascination, and enjoy the hunt. I intend to spend my retirement years learning to identify and better preserve what I've found and hand it down to my heirs.

[tracer]

just realized i dint answer the question yesterday. um, well, first of all, i've always wanted to own all animals. once i started trying to do that years ago, most of the animals made me painfully aware of why they are called "wild animals" and why they are unsuitable pets. so then one time i was on a vacation and walking around in "the boonies", i tripped over a fossil and fell and broke my left distal half-pint. while lying there in mourning, i had an epiphany - if i collected fossils, i'd be making the world safer for humans and animals who are prone to tripping. i would also be able to own a large number of pieces of animals from different species and as long as i didn't keep them on the floor or wobbly shelves, they probably couldn't hurt me.

so that's what i did. and i think the reason i enjoy studying them is because i'm interested in animal behavior. but so far they all seem to behave pretty much the same, which i find odd.

as far as how i store them in order to avoid having the place overrun by them, i was going to build some shelves out of fossil wood to put the stuff on, but after running through six or eight boxes of nails with no success, i gave up on that concept. i ordered a bunch of foam forms that taxidermists use to mount deer heads and painted them brown and hot glued all the fossils to them and then mounted them on the wall.

i've sent several museum people pictures of my collection asking what arrangements i should make for my treasures to be properly curated long term once i'm unable to deal with them any more. i have not heard back from any of the museum people and from reading this forum i'm assuming it's just because they're busy hanging out with some of ya'll and analyzing your stuff.

but anyway i love my fossils and the more i learn the more i'm fascinated by the vast amount of natural history reaching back over millions of years that makes everything currently going on barely seem like a speed bump. everybody's worrying about running over squirrels and such when a short few thousand years ago they would have been worrying about getting stomped by a mammoth.

i collect fossils because it keeps me grounded.

[Auspex]

Fossils are a distilled concentrate of secrets, and the grist through which I may exercise both sides of my brain.

[Life 42]

Fossil collecting is my therapy. It brings me peace and excitement. I love watching someone's face light up in amazement when you give them a tooth or a bone and reveal its millions of years old. Each new find is energizing and in some ways makes me feel like a kid again myself.

[mikeymig]

“The passion for naming things is an odd human trait. It is strange that men always feel so much more at ease when they have put appellations on the things around them and that a wild, new region almost seems familiar and subdued once enough names have been used on it, even though in fact it is not changed in the slightest. Or, on second thought, it is perhaps not really strange. The urge to name must be as old as the human race, as old as speech which is one of the really fundamental characteristics by which we rise above the brutes, and thus a basic and essential part of the human spirit or soul. The naming fallacy is common enough even in science. Many a scientist claims to have explained some phenomenon when in truth all he has done is to give it a name. ” - George Gaylord Simpson

I agree with everyone else on this thread but must admit I have to put a name to everything I see. It also has to do with shapes and forms because I also collect minerals, skulls, seashells, artifacts and I dabble in Mycology. Variation upon a theme captivates me.

[Kehbe]

I can only speak for myself when I say I collect because of intrigue, fascination, wonder and amazement at the diversity and age of life on this huge rock called earth. The thrill of finding and laying eyes on something that no human being has ever before layed eyes upon, touching something that may be a million years old or older, discovering an unknown, which by the way, I haven't done yet, keeps me digging in the dirt! It is something I share and have in common with all five of my grandkids and there is nothing I enjoy more than getting outdoors on a beautiful day and spending time with curious young minds that have more questions than I have answers for! We enjoy finding, looking at, cleaning up, talking about and discussing and researching everything we find and I too have more "rocks" laying around my house and in the garage and up in the attic than my wife would prefer. I seriously doubt that any respectful museum would want any of what I have but thats okay because for me, it's the thrill of the hunt and the joy of the find. I often question why other people do not share my enthusiasm and cannot understand "why"! Actually I wrote a short poem about it that explains my take on it! Here is a link to it and I hope you enjoy it! Good luck! http://www.thefossil...-geopaleo-poem/

[Wrangellian]

Thanks everyone, All good thoughts.. some I wouldnt have thought of but now that I read them I realize I feel the same way. Like probably most people, I also collect minerals, seashells, coins, etc etc as well, so it gets kind of cluttered here! The room is disappearing but I can see no end in sight to the collecting - so long as there is rock exposed out there within driving distance, there are fossils to be found, and others are looking too so I have to be on top of it or I miss out on the good stuff! ('Early bird gets the worm' kind of thing).... I guess I can't do without the collecting and curating, it's a form of therapy: Whenever I think about things that irritate me I just go work on fossils and am grounded in the present again - but then I start to think about the future of my collection and lack of room and the anxiety is back! Guess I just shouldn't think about it right now! No one's got a gun to my head (yet) to get rid of everything.. I'm sure I'll feel better once I've 'accessioned' my latest finds and gotten some more shallow drawer cabinets to store them in instead of in flats all scattered around the room, and when it comes time to donate, the museum can take what it wants and the rest will be sold or donated. No worries.

But I will start to be more selective about what I bring home, or what I keep out of what I bring home.

[ghost1066]

I collect for the fun. I enjoy the chase and the find but I rarely do any research but rather enjoy the shapes, sizes, colors. I know a few of our local species fairly well but only in a general way. Most of mine are packed away and even more are left in the field. I like the idea of the story behind them rather than the science even though I love science.

As far as anyone telling me what I can or cannot sell, I would be more than happy to tell them to place that in their third point of contact. What I collect is mine and if I need to, want to or saw fit to, I would sell whatever I needed to. If I had specimens that I could sell to help support my hobby I would do it in a second and that is my business.

As for donating them, it is a nice idea and I have at times but now I give them to kids or schools that will enjoy them or use them in teaching rather than stuffing my hard earned collection in a drawer to be forgotten in some museum back room. You can't fool me I saw Raider's of the Lost Ark.

[Vordigern]

I started hunting fossils out of a fascintation for those creatures who no longer roam this earth and a desire to learn more about them but my motivations have evolved over the years. I still retain all my original fascination but Ive also developed a thrill for the hunt, a joy of hunting with family/freinds ,a desire to have the best specimen possible and a little bit of envy of what Ive seen others find, a characteristic which has been magnified since joinig this forum and seeing what everyone else is finding on a regualr basis ( darn you dhk and your delightful little reptile tracks )

[Wrangellian]

You're not kidding... I think I'd be still picking up little worthless bits of "What is this?" if I hadnt seen what can be found in other people collections both here on the Forum and in person at shows etc.

Ghost1066, I feel the same way exactly, but I guess when an organization lays down rules for its members it's perfectly within its rights to bar you from membership if you break them, I'm just not sure if they're shooting themselves in the foot by having such rules when their membership are probably the most responsible collectors, and the rest of the population (not always so responsible) can still freely sell. So the decision for me is whether membership provides a benefit greater than the money I could make by not being a member. I'm still ruminating on that one... I can't deny I like having contact with the experts who might one day facilitate the publication of something new I might find, though they are still not a very accessible group...

[ghost1066]

"I can't deny I like having contact with the experts who might one day facilitate the publication of something new I might find, though they are still not a very accessible group.."

I have a friend who isn't a member of any group yet talks to most of the top people in the nation whenever he likes. If a group has rules I don't agree with I won't be a member. They are dictating to you what you can do with your personal property, if that is ok with you then by all means stay in but I would be gone in a second, rather I would never have joined. I am in fact a member of a group that asks me regularly to post pics and I won't because the site says if I do they own MY pics. No they don't, I have the copyright on anything I produce and just because I allow it to be shown doesn't mean they can just take the rights, so no pics for them.

I do understand wanting to be part of something but not to be held hostage for something that may never happen (getting something published) by experts that aren't easy to get to anyway. My personal rights mean more to me than a membership that has any leanings toward an elitist attitude. Believe me I get asked regularly to join several and always refuse because of only a couple of their rules. I hope you can decide what is best for you and still be able to enjoy what we do.

Happy hunting.

[Auspex]

...I am in fact a member of a group that asks me regularly to post pics and I won't because the site says if I do they own MY pics. No they don't, I have the copyright on anything I produce and just because I allow it to be shown doesn't mean they can just take the rights, so no pics for them...

You do not transfer the rights to your picture, you grant permission, by posting it, to the organization to host it. It is still yours, and the org. has no right to sell it or do anything but give it the space it takes. This absolves the org. from any liability associated with your copyright within this single instance. It is a rule that protects the org.; you give up nothing.

[siteseer]

I have always been interested in animals, but when I was in the first grade I learned about dinosaurs, a group of land animals, some gigantic, that actually did exist but died out long before there were people. That was an amazing thing to learn for a kid like me. My fascination with animals and my expanding understanding of them (animals of today, animals that lived after the time of the dinosaurs but before humans, animals that lived before dinosaurs) is probably what ignited my drive to learn to read and write. I can think of no better encouragement to learn to spell than to be interested in Archaeopteryx, Triceratops, and other scientific names or terms. It was also a path to a growing interest in science. Less consciously and over time, I learned to try to think objectively and critically.

Fast forward to 1987, the year I graduated from colllege. I had started as a geology major but I couldn't get through the math so I switched over to languages in which I had always done well in high school. I still liked zoology and paleontology but decided it would have to be a side interest That year, I checked out a Nature Company store, a national chain of natural history-related shops, in a local mall and saw fossils for sale. That was an incredible sight. I had no idea that people bought and collected fossils the way others collected baseball cards or coins.

Each Nature Company store had a case with beautiful fossils and minerals. There would be Psiloceras from England, a Solnhofen horseshoe crab, an oreodont skull from South Dakota, a big Green River fish, and maybe a eurypterid. I couldn't afford that stuff but I bought two unlabelled shark teeth that I would later understand to be an Isurus planus and an Isurus hastalis from the Sharktooth Hill Boned. At the time Nature Company had a competitor chain, Natural Wonders. At a local store I bought a Baculites section, an oreodont jaw, and a shark tooth in matrix (a site in South Dakota no longer accessible).

From that point on I have been collecting fossils. My schooling had prepared me for spending time in libraries so it was a natural thing for me to continue doing that. However, it was now for reading not just the books you can buy at bookstores but also the technical books and articles that contain the original research (official descriptions, citations, discussions, etc.). I learned more about the animals I had read about as a kid, finding out what is known, what is not known, and what probably won't be known. I re-discovered old localities and made new friends in the process.

I can understand paleontologists frowning on the commercial interest in fossils. Specimens (or just the collecting information) are often lost in the hands of private collectors but it is also true that some unknown number of specimens and collecting information has been preserved because of private collectors. I have learned that the buying and selling of fossils predates the studying of fossils so it sounds unfair to restrict the exchange of legal-to-own property in any way. I have a friend who had to sell some of her fossils after having to retire early due to health issues. The sale of the fossils is helping to pay for medical procedures and her living expenses. I admit I'm biased but I could not hold that against anyone. If your collection is the only personal asset that you can cash in, then that's your business, especially these days.

Most of the time, fossils are just random water-worn pieces but they are all we have of many otherwise long-gone organisms. Most animals are known just from shells, teeth, a few bones, just footprints. Some plants are known only from leaves. Some fossils show how different the earth was (shark tooth found in Kansas) during past ages; some tell us some things haven't changed too much in some parts of the world (Miocene alligator teeth in Florida). These pieces represent uncounted mysteries across geologic time.

Some fossils are important guides in the search for oil deposits. Our immediate ancestors even fashioned specimens into tools. To some they are unique conversation pieces or knick-knacks in the living room, but to a young mind, the ammonite on a mantle or skeleton in a museum can become an inspiration to a career or at least an appreciation of science.

Jess

I'm just curious as to what members would give as their reasons for their hobby/obsession, other than "because we're crazy" or "something to do".. I suppose I'll get as many different reasons as replies, and I can think of a few already, but the reason I ask is because I'm thinking about where my collection should eventually end up and whether I should start high-grading it and disposing of my lesser stuff and how. I'm not quite ready to get rid of them all yet but maybe I need to start thinking about it instead of just blindly accumulating...

The hill where I'm doing most of my collecting lately is a recovery effort, a race against time as the site will be developed soon. I've got more than 550 individual specimens from there so far - mind you many of them are small and will fit inside a 1" box. But I am running out of room to put them. Maybe I should start to be more selective about what I take home, but I know some 'experts' who will collect even the more common/unimpressive things just for the sake of science, and I also can't help but collect every 1/2 clam I find as long as it is identifiable, but at what point does it become OCD instead of a scientific recovery effort?

Also, as a member of the local Paleo. Society we are encouraged to donate specimens to the RBCM (Royal BC Museum) but as a collector I am torn: The museum should rightfully house all the best/most important specimens, but if I donated only my better specimens my collection will not be so impressive, plus my numbering system/catalog that I have been diligently maintaining will be broken up - maybe they are more valuable as a collection than a bunch of individual specimens? (for any potential scientific statistical surveys and such).. I could donate the whole shebang but the museum is running out of room, and I wonder if my efforts would be worth it anyway (they might not see the light of day/publication until after I'm dead). The Society doesn't allow members to sell fossils, but if I could sell off my 'spares', and keep (and eventually donate to the RBCM) my better stuff, I could better sustain my hobby. [i don't collect with the aim of making money, but I don't have a lot of money and this would surely help at least a bit.] I could quit the Soc. and go that route, (and maybe lose some respect among the local paleo community), or I could trade some 'spares' away but I would end up with the same number of fossils and lack of room....

I don't know. I can't see any other options but I can't tell which of the above is the best. Do I need to even worry about this or does it eventually sort itself out? (haha, yeah right) Am I putting too much importance on one thing and not enough on another? Opinions welcomed. Why do you collect and what do you (plan to) do with your fossils?

Thanks for reading if you made it thru..