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How important is provenance?


Down under fossil hunter

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Well it has been a very long time since I have started a post on here (been too busy collecting) but I wanted to share my thoughts on establishing 'provenance' before a fossil purchase.

 

 

What is provenance? Simply put establishing the provenance of a fossil is all about establishing its origin and includes things like: Where was it found (location)? Who found it? When was it found etc.

This is also strongly linked to the value of the fossil for example two identical specimens one with solid provenance the other with nothing can be the difference between a fossil that is priceless and one that is worthless. 

In this same way a museum could potentially view a fossil given to them with no history as nothing more than a rock, as it has lost all scientific value.

 

Good dealers do a great job collecting as much provenance as they can in order to get top dollar for their specimens, this might include only purchasing directly from the digger, providing in-situ photos of the fossil when it was discovered and/or prepared as well as very detailed location and collection data.

Astute collectors also will understand that the better the provenance a fossil has the more valued and prized it will be.

 

People sometimes underestimate just how easy it is to fake a fossil and we can get caught up trying to avoid undisclosed enhancements, repairs and restoration that we don't stop and ask all the right questions.

 

 

 

Below is a simple table that I use (until today kept in my head) to help grade fossils in my collection as to how authentic they are and how strong their provenance is.

 

It is important to note that the majority of my collecting is centred around dinosaur teeth and as such establishing correct id's is much harder than on some other groups of fossils.

 

Provenance.jpg.32bc2ab6f0a1ec73343de9d01fdcc3be.jpg

 

The horizontal line looks at who discovered the fossil and how many degrees of separation are there between you and that person, as well as looking into how trustworthy the seller is (have they been caught out in the past, have they sold other misrepresented pieces). This line looks at the people and relationships element and delves into the integrity, reputation and personal brand of the individual.

 

The vertical line looks at the more practical aspects of the fossil itself and although I have used very brief descriptions this part is about how much homework have you the buyer done?

Have you compared the specimen to others sold? Have you dug up journals or PDF's on that formation and the creatures that live in it? What diagnostic features will prove or disprove the id? Once a red flag is found its important to ask the question and seek clarification.

 

Finally the colours...

The colours simply represent the level of risk involved in making a purchase. Starting with BLUE as the least risky building all the way up to RED which in my opinion should be avoided at all cost. These colours are nothing more than a guide and there are multiple other considerations that could affect the level of provenance and all need to be considered. At the end of the day a perfect 5 inch theropod tooth that has no provenance and doesn't match could still be a great acquisition if the price is cheap enough.

The "scores" in the boxes are just me playing around with formulas and overcomplicating things.

 

 

Hopefully this has been a useful read and gives you all some deeper perspective on the subject, happy to hear peoples thoughts and comments if there are any :-)

 

 

 

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Nice post.

 

As someone who mostly buys fossils instead of finding them myself, it can sometimes be hard to get fossils with clear provenance. I definitely have some fossils in my collection where it isn't entirely clear where they came from exactly. Some of my fossils would definitely fall in the yellow or red catagory on your provenance matrix. But I find that there are ways to counter some of these problems.

 

The last few years I've almost exclusively focused on reptiles. And a way to counter poor provenance is to specialise in a certain fossil location and mainly collect fossils from there. If you're quite familiar with the types of fossils that are found in a certain location, even if a fossil has no information on it at all, which would be red on your matrix, one can often identify the species and most likely provenance through the process of elimination. Some locations also have very typical preservation that can easily be recognised with a little research.

Of course this is no substitute for having information on an exact location with photos and GPS coordinates. But in general I find that one can still learn a lot from an unknown fossil from an unknown location.

 

I bought a dinosaur vertebra recently. The information that came with it was that it was from the Kem Kem beds in Morocco. The trouble with the Kem Kem beds is that it consists of two separate formations. But through some research I found out that aparently only one of these formations has clay in them. And with the vertebra having purple clay on it, I could safely eliminate one of the two formations as a possibility. Yay for research!

 

So even a "red" can sometimes become something like an "orange" or "yellow" with some good research.

Olof Moleman AKA Lord Trilobite

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This is a good post...provenance for a fossil really is where its intrinsic value lies. Provenance helps provide ecological background, age, credits the finder/donater, etc. Without it, there would be many fossils that could be stated as being something else and thus provide confusion. Take croc teeth for example...without provenance, a crocodile tooth could be any number of species.

"Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another."
-Romans 14:19

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nice post! will be very helpful!

When I was volunteering at *A museum* they had a stylemys turtle mutli plate. It had species, collected by, date, and a state, but no city name. They asked me to take it out back throw it in the dumpster and hammer it into pieces...I threw it in the dumpster and went home. Never went back.

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22 minutes ago, FossilDudeCO said:

They asked me to take it out back throw it in the dumpster and hammer it into pieces...I threw it in the dumpster and went home. Never went back.

According to this sequence of events, did they want you to climb into the dumpster and break the specimen into pieces? That has to violate some kind of labour law! :P 

 

In all seriousness, that is just awful. You probably made the right decision to never go back if that was their practice. At the very least, some of the specimens could have been contributed to classrooms. :( 

...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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5 hours ago, FossilDudeCO said:

nice post! will be very helpful!

When I was volunteering at *A museum* they had a stylemys turtle mutli plate. It had species, collected by, date, and a state, but no city name. They asked me to take it out back throw it in the dumpster and hammer it into pieces...I threw it in the dumpster and went home. Never went back.

Well, id have taken it if you wanted to get rid of it so badly, id have paid shipping too!

“...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

Happy hunting,

Mason

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This happened at a VERY large reputable museum. I offered to make a donation for it, set up a transfer to another small museum, and to research it myself. No go.

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2 minutes ago, FossilDudeCO said:

This happened at a VERY large reputable museum. I offered to make a donation for it, set up a transfer to another small museum, and to research it myself. No go.

That is as much of a crime as letting fossils set out in the field until they turn to sand.

Boy the rules are snarged.

Darwin said: " Man sprang from monkeys."

Will Rogers said: " Some of them didn't spring far enough."

 

My Fossil collection - My Mineral collection

My favorite thread on TFF.

 

 

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5 hours ago, FossilDudeCO said:

nice post! will be very helpful!

When I was volunteering at *A museum* they had a stylemys turtle mutli plate. It had species, collected by, date, and a state, but no city name. They asked me to take it out back throw it in the dumpster and hammer it into pieces...I threw it in the dumpster and went home. Never went back.

In my opinion your account is an outstanding example of arrogance masquerading as Science.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, also are remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. - Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

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9 hours ago, LordTrilobite said:

Nice post.

 

As someone who mostly buys fossils instead of finding them myself, it can sometimes be hard to get fossils with clear provenance. I definitely have some fossils in my collection where it isn't entirely clear where they came from exactly. Some of my fossils would definitely fall in the yellow or red catagory on your provenance matrix. But I find that there are ways to counter some of these problems.

 

The last few years I've almost exclusively focused on reptiles. And a way to counter poor provenance is to specialise in a certain fossil location and mainly collect fossils from there. If you're quite familiar with the types of fossils that are found in a certain location, even if a fossil has no information on it at all, which would be red on your matrix, one can often identify the species and most likely provenance through the process of elimination. Some locations also have very typical preservation that can easily be recognised with a little research.

Of course this is no substitute for having information on an exact location with photos and GPS coordinates. But in general I find that one can still learn a lot from an unknown fossil from an unknown location.

 

I bought a dinosaur vertebra recently. The information that came with it was that it was from the Kem Kem beds in Morocco. The trouble with the Kem Kem beds is that it consists of two separate formations. But through some research I found out that aparently only one of these formations has clay in them. And with the vertebra having purple clay on it, I could safely eliminate one of the two formations as a possibility. Yay for research!

 

So even a "red" can sometimes become something like an "orange" or "yellow" with some good research.

 

Great response, I agree with you completely and that was part of my point.

If as a collector you do your homework you can certainly improve a specimens provenance.

With your reptile example however on my matrix I think it would be a yellow (risk somewhere in the middle) as it might not have come with any collection  information however you have performed your due diligence and the fossil is a perfect match for where you think it is from.

The example you have used is great as it generates good discussion. Perhaps the very top right box should be Green?

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6 hours ago, FossilDudeCO said:

nice post! will be very helpful!

When I was volunteering at *A museum* they had a stylemys turtle mutli plate. It had species, collected by, date, and a state, but no city name. They asked me to take it out back throw it in the dumpster and hammer it into pieces...I threw it in the dumpster and went home. Never went back.

 

Dont think I could have done that, seems absolutely crazy.

I agree with others, surely it could have been donated to a school or something?

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Yargh... I can somewhat understand why grocery stores will pitch stuff before/near/at their expiry dates rather than donate those to a soup kitchen, for legal liability reasons, but scrubbing fossil specimens so no one else can have them seems absurd. There is no human health risk. I just don't get why destruction is necessary here. I can even understand retail outlets destroying products to scupper secondhand markets from having an impact on people purchasing new(er) products, as that is part of the profit motive. But a museum? I just don't understand the motive in this case. :( 

...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Down under fossil hunter said:

 

Great response, I agree with you completely and that was part of my point.

If as a collector you do your homework you can certainly improve a specimens provenance.

With your reptile example however on my matrix I think it would be a yellow (risk somewhere in the middle) as it might not have come with any collection  information however you have performed your due diligence and the fossil is a perfect match for where you think it is from.

The example you have used is great as it generates good discussion. Perhaps the very top right box should be Green?

Actually, I think that your top right box being yellow is good as is. I think one size does not fit all in this case. Some fossil locations are very well studied, and even without any information, sometimes a fossil can be very precicely placed in where it came from due to the site being well studied. But sometimes even if something is a really good match, one just cannot be certain, which could be due to a variety of factors. So for some fossils the top right might be a "green". But I think having it a "yellow" denotes a healthy dose of skepticism that should probably be employed in any situation when a provenance is not certain. With my example of the dinosaur vertebra from Kem Kem I got lucky with a snippet of information that was just what I needed. But without that I wouldn't have been able to place it in a certain formation and I would have to be satisfied with just Kem Kem beds as provenance. Still, you never know what detail could be the key to getting a better understanding of where something came from.

But yeah, the yellow is probably fine as often there might still be some doubt.

 

 

On a related note, this is also why labeling is important. Having information of a provenance is one thing. But one could forget the information, and if it's not written down and a collection or specimen is passed on to others the provenance can be lost. Though I must admit I'm not the best at labeling as there's just so much information to record and much is still just in my head, but I try my best. And I can also definitely recommend the Trilobase programme as a tool for organising a collection.

Olof Moleman AKA Lord Trilobite

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53 minutes ago, Kane said:

Yargh... I can somewhat understand why grocery stores will pitch stuff before/near/at their expiry dates rather than donate those to a soup kitchen, for legal liability reasons, but scrubbing fossil specimens so no one else can have them seems absurd. There is no human health risk. I just don't get why destruction is necessary here. I can even understand retail outlets destroying products to scupper secondhand markets from having an impact on people purchasing new(er) products, as that is part of the profit motive. But a museum? I just don't understand the motive in this case. :( 

 

Working for a large retailer the "destruction" of product however senseless it may seem is a legal obligation. For example if we wrote off a product as being unfit for purchase we would also in many cases make a claim through our insurer on that product. As part of that claim the insurer would expect that the product had been destroyed.

This is especially important with items that have the potential to cause harm (power tools, electrical items etc).

By not destroying them a company can be liable if someone injures themselves with the product even if it has been taken out of a bin.

as for some fossil turtles... not quite sure what harm could come from "not destroying them"?

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On 10/19/2017 at 9:41 AM, FossilDudeCO said:

nice post! will be very helpful!

When I was volunteering at *A museum* they had a stylemys turtle mutli plate. It had species, collected by, date, and a state, but no city name. They asked me to take it out back throw it in the dumpster and hammer it into pieces...I threw it in the dumpster and went home. Never went back.

Madness, utter madness. 

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On 10/19/2017 at 4:05 PM, Down under fossil hunter said:

 

Working for a large retailer the "destruction" of product however senseless it may seem is a legal obligation. For example if we wrote off a product as being unfit for purchase we would also in many cases make a claim through our insurer on that product. As part of that claim the insurer would expect that the product had been destroyed.

This is especially important with items that have the potential to cause harm (power tools, electrical items etc).

By not destroying them a company can be liable if someone injures themselves with the product even if it has been taken out of a bin.

as for some fossil turtles... not quite sure what harm could come from "not destroying them"?

"Don't take that turtle fossil, you'll shoot your eye out kid!"

 

 

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Not that I agree with the idea of destroying a fossil, but my guess is that the museum didn't want that specimen coming back to them later with made-up information on it, causing potential confusion to science... The donor's motive for making up the info would be the tax credit he gets for the donation. Maybe? Does this ever happen?

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On 10/19/2017 at 3:55 AM, Down under fossil hunter said:

Hopefully this has been a useful read and gives you all some deeper perspective on the subject, happy to hear peoples thoughts and comments if there are any :-)

 

You could make a case for the only blue square being the one in the upper left, but then those were found by yourself and you won't be considering purchasing from yourself. Even then, as Lord Trilo pointed out, you can forget your own location info if you don't record it right away before you forget it. (Been there done that!) I guess that's the white squares on the left?  ;)

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On 10/19/2017 at 2:01 PM, FossilDudeCO said:

This happened at a VERY large reputable museum. I offered to make a donation for it, set up a transfer to another small museum, and to research it myself. No go.

If that was their wish, I would have transferred it to the back of the car and "disposed" of it on my shelf at home.

 

 

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