Judge Rules In Favor Of T-rex Fossil Hunters

[Harry Pristis]

The 1987 Academy of Sciences/National Research Council report, PALEONTOLOGICAL COLLECTING, provided ten conclusions and recommendations. Those recommendations take up three typed pages, but I can offer here the one that really had the SVP upset.

Recommendation #3. All public lands should be open to fossil collecting for scientific purposes. Except in cases involving quarrying or commercial collecting, collecting fossils on public lands [other than national parks] should not be subject to permit requirements or other regulation.

The committee recommends the following procedures and definitions:

Reconnaissance Collecting:

Requires no advance notice to any public land manager; no permit is required. Such collecting is a day or less at any one locality and involves surface collecting by hand tools.

Extended Stay Collecting:

Requires written advance notice to the land manager so that applicable rules can be known and followed; no permit is required. Consists of surface collecting for more than one day by using hand tools.

Quarrying for Fossils:

For this report, a paleontological quarry is defined as an excavation of greater than two (2) cubic yards initiated for the extraction of fossils. Collecting fossils by quarrying should be controlled by permit procedure. Permit forms should be simple.

[micropterus101]

I think there is a few bad apples on both sides. I know people with good and bad experiences with the proffesionals. So far I have ran into brick walls, most recently with a find I made on a public beach here in Washington. I have a the front half of a dolphin skull with at least one of the earbones even though this is from a beach where new species have been found and every vertabrate piece can be important ,without people like myself many will be ground into pebbles for somebodys rock tumbler. I am willing to cooperate donate or whatever yet I am made to feel like a pee-on as are my friends who have made donations of huge discoveries and had the museum paleos take the credit for there discoveries. If some paleos dont pull there heads out they will see less and less cooperation from the amatuers and if they make it illegal for amateurs to collect there will be no cooperation whatsover yet collecting will still be done. Shouldnt amatuers be encouraged by the proffesionals? Steered it the right direction methods technique records? I am going to find the old spots and some new ones. I might as well know the right way.

KOR,Jason

[Boesse]

"I think there is a few bad apples on both sides. I know people with good and bad experiences with the proffesionals. So far I have ran into brick walls, most recently with a find I made on a public beach here in Washington. I have a the front half of a dolphin skull with at least one of the earbones even though this is from a beach where new species have been found and every vertabrate piece can be important ,without people like myself many will be ground into pebbles for somebodys rock tumbler."

I'm guessing you collected it? Have you gotten any professional opinions on it? If you still have it, I'd love to take a look at some pictures, if possible. What's the age?

"I am willing to cooperate donate or whatever yet I am made to feel like a pee-on as are my friends who have made donations of huge discoveries and had the museum paleos take the credit for there discoveries. If some paleos dont pull there heads out they will see less and less cooperation from the amatuers and if they make it illegal for amateurs to collect there will be no cooperation whatsover yet collecting will still be done. Shouldnt amatuers be encouraged by the proffesionals? Steered it the right direction methods technique records? I am going to find the old spots and some new ones. I might as well know the right way."

Jason, I couldn't agree with you more. One of the real unfortunate trends in paleontology is that true, honest to goodness field paleontologists are becoming a dying breed - more and more paleontologists are being trained in biology departments, and have no clue, or rather no intention of ever brandishing a rock hammer and doing things the way Marsh and Cope did. A lot of new students these days have to rely on material collected completely by other people, be they museum crews or amateurs.

The big problem with this trend is that you could call it a positive feedback loop, i.e. two mechanisms together further the impact of the other. In this case, these paleobiologists just don't deal with amateur collectors, or don't really know how to; a lot operate on the assumption that other people will always be donating fossils or volunteering to do fieldwork. So you're totally right, this problem could definitely grow in the future.

Just posing a thought out here - and the unfortunate thing is there are a lot of folks who'd want to hang me for saying this - it would be great for there to be some sort of system in place to grant permits to amateur collectors in certain clases. I.e. the following: collectors could keep ordinary vert. fossils (i.e. isolated bones, teeth, etc), and would turn 'important' specimens (whatever that means, just bear with me for now) over to appropriate federal repositories. Permit rules would mandate proper notes, locality data/coords etc. In a perfect world, just like driving, or hunting, or fishing, you would have to get some sort of license.

I dunno, just a thought, and a very crude one at that. In any event, such a system would be great just to get the things out of the ground before they get destroyed; sort of a shoot first with permission, ask questions later sorta thing. I think something like that would be a good sort of compromise.

And one last thing: I totally agree with the comment about professionals taking the credit. I HATE when I see that. I really dislike it when I read articles describing new fossils that don't even mention or acknowledge the collector. For starters, lets just say if (and the possibility is pretty high) some of these fossils I'm studying that our good ole friend RJB collected, I'm naming them after him. Its gonna take a bit more prepwork for sure, though...

[Gatorman]

I think that requiring a license should be dependent upon conditions. Because for one people just walking the beach taht happen to find a fossil should not be required to have a license, but those that hunt fossils regularly and are more likely to find something significant should be.

[micropterus101]

I'm guessing you collected it? Have you gotten any professional opinions on it? If you still have it, I'd love to take a look at some pictures, if possible. What's the age?

Boesse,

I did collect it and I will take some pics of it and post them. it is from the Physt formation ogliocene. Its wrapped up in my truck right now and the wife is out. I keep it in my truck just in case I run into somebody by chance. A friend of mine who got me started in fossil hunting who has made some great discoveries best guess is its a dolphin skull. The only paleo I know of to take a look at it is seemingly too busy as a possibly new species of worm I found and sent pics along with Gps coordinates still hasnt gotten back to me on after two years. Its kind of frustrating, heck just today I was popping open extra large nautiloid concretions and found good size crab that is not one I could Identify. Not Portunities, Vulgaris, Mursa, Rania, or any other I know of from the lincoln creek formation here in Washington.

KOF, Jason

[MB]

Boesse,

I did collect it and I will take some pics of it and post them. it is from the Physt formation ogliocene. Its wrapped up in my truck right now and the wife is out. I keep it in my truck just in case I run into somebody by chance. A friend of mine who got me started in fossil hunting who has made some great discoveries best guess is its a dolphin skull. The only paleo I know of to take a look at it is seemingly too busy as a possibly new species of worm I found and sent pics along with Gps coordinates still hasnt gotten back to me on after two years. Its kind of frustrating, heck just today I was popping open extra large nautiloid concretions and found good size crab that is not one I could Identify. Not Portunities, Vulgaris, Mursa, Rania, or any other I know of from the lincoln creek formation here in Washington.

KOF, Jason

Hi,

About this topic I think that the good way could be the common sense, the balance, the collaboration between the "good" professional and the "good" collectors that all of us we are.

I all case, this topic my not posible in my country, everything is public property, thus, any problem.

Jason, about the non identified crabs you said, you have not so far from you the speciallist on crabs, and even from my humble positiion, if you want, I could try to help you, mp would be good.

Happy hunting

[Guest michael]

Harry Pristis make your own forum if you want to come and say that stuff about svp

[Gatorman]

Michael your post is clearly not productive, please refrain from telling other members what they should do.

[Guest michael]

nope anson Harry Pristis this a porlbem

[Gatorman]

No Michael he isn't. Posts such as yours with no valid argument are unintelligible and unnecessary just because you are for the SVP does not make you right and anyone that speaks against it wrong. I think Harry's argument was sound and he has a right to his opinion and a right to voice it on this forum, the same as everyone else. If you cannot respect that right then you should just keep your mouth shut.

[Guest solius symbiosus]

Shouldnt amatuers be encouraged by the proffesionals? Steered it the right direction methods technique records? I am going to find the old spots and some new ones. I might as well know the right way.

KOR,Jason

Amature and professional Astronomers have a very cordial relationship, and both contribute to the science. Amatures provide an invaluable service to that science that otherwise wouldn't be accomplished. Perhaps, we could learn from them.

[Harry Pristis]

Amature and professional Astronomers have a very cordial relationship, and both contribute to the science. Amatures provide an invaluable service to that science that otherwise wouldn't be accomplished. Perhaps, we could learn from them.

There are a number of scientific pursuits in which amateur contributions are valued. Why look any further than invertebrate paleontology?

A long time ago, an invert worker at the Florida State Museum explained to me that there was no tension between invertebrate pals and collectors because there is so much more material available -- so many species and so many specimens -- that no one gets greedy.

In an interesting convergence of interests in 1987, SVP-think started to infiltrate the invert realm. Three and a half years after the Florida State Museum grabbed control of vertebrate fossil collecting in the state, the head of the Program of Vertebrate Paleontology, S. David Webb, tipped his hand at a workshop. Webb proposed that the Museum should develop a long-range plan to bring private land and invertebrate fossils under its management purview.

I sent Dave an open letter, demanding that he resign his position as head of the Program of Vertebrate Paleontology. He didn't resign until he retired a couple of years ago, but that was the last of any (public) talk about expanding the Museum's regulatory power.

---------Harry Pristis