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Demetrios

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Hi, 

 

I have been a mineral specimen collector and have dabbled a bit in fossils for fun. I recently acquired a fossil and was seeking some advice. This piece still needs some work and restoration and I was wondering if anyone knew someone who could help me out. I am pretty sure it is a protoceratops skull. Still lots of loose pieces that need to be added to it. I am in Atlanta. Attached is a picture. I can send more.

 

Thanks for any help or advice. 

 

Demetrios 

Proto.jpg

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Welcome to the Forum.  :) 

That is a stunning piece, ... but I would be worried about the legality of owning this fossil. Do you have a clear chain of provenance? 

China and Mongolia have (and have had for many years) very strict laws concerning the export of vertebrate fossils. :unsure: 

 

 

    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."
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Welcome to the forum from New York! Good luck with restoring that skull!

Dipleurawhisperer5.jpg

I like Trilo-butts and I cannot lie.

 

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2 hours ago, Fossildude19 said:

Welcome to the Forum.  :) 

That is a stunning piece, ... but I would be worried about the legality of owning this fossil. Do you have a clear chain of provenance? 

China and Mongolia have (and have had for many years) very strict laws concerning the export of vertebrate fossils. :unsure: 

 

 

Agreed.

 

That being said, it is a beautiful specimen. I don't know any preparators in the Atlanta area although I'm certain they exist. If you have the provenance showing the legal chain of events from collection to your ownership and you have the funding/ability to ship it, I would be happy to work on it for you. :D

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This piece was discovered in the Gobi Desert in 1918 by two British brothers who had been stationed in India during the War. It was discovered while they were prospecting for Gold. I have some documentation and am busy putting together the rest. This predates any laws that were enacted so I believe I am safe. If I don't find anyone locally I will contact you. Thanks for the info.

 

Demetrios 

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wow!  Beautiful.

I wonder if a museum would do the restoration in exchange for letting them display it for a couple of years.  While you retain ownership, of course, and be credited as the owner... I mean, as wonderful as it is, where in the house could you display it that would do it justice?  At least not my house :headscratch:

 

(don't mind me, I'm always looking for the win-win :) )

Everything is generated through your own will power ~ Ray Bradbury
 

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9 minutes ago, Walt said:

Cool specimen with a truly interesting history.  I can't help at this point.  I have too many other projects lined up.  Can't even get to my own prepping. 

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44 minutes ago, Walt said:

wow!  Beautiful.

I wonder if a museum would do the restoration in exchange for letting them display it for a couple of years.  While you retain ownership, of course, and be credited as the owner... I mean, as wonderful as it is, where in the house could you display it that would do it justice?  At least not my house :headscratch:

 

(don't mind me, I'm always looking for the win-win :) )

Also from a museum perspective, we would NOT touch a specimen that is not ours.  We have been burned in the past by doing so and that chapter is over.  I doubt any museum would but that is not a reason to not try.  We are currently holding some pretty cool White River specimens that we won't touch unless they get donated.  

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I recall reading about a museum in South Carolina that did all the prep on a whale skull (which was an undescribed species) on a "gentleman's agreement" that the fossil would be donated to the museum.  When the prep was completed the "gentleman" reclaimed the fossil and sold it to a private collector.

 

Don

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1 hour ago, FossilDAWG said:

I recall reading about a museum in South Carolina that did all the prep on a whale skull (which was an undescribed species) on a "gentleman's agreement" that the fossil would be donated to the museum.  When the prep was completed the "gentleman" reclaimed the fossil and sold it to a private collector.

 

Don

These things happen.  Please you guys and gals.. don't be that guy/gal.  

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42 minutes ago, jpc said:

These things happen.  Please you guys and gals.. don't be that guy/gal.  

Here here.

 

I prep a ton of stuff that isn't mine, kind of a requirement for a contract preparator (and I'm not a museum) but the statement is there that damage can happen and unless the client is a regular, the finished product doesn't ship back to them without payment (even with that, I've been burned a time or two. In our current society, I don't see why anyone would enter into a "gentleman's agreement" with anyone other than their closest friend. :headscratch:

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The history of this skull alone is priceless!
Congratulations on your superb acquisition. Anything you could share about the detective work establishing the provenance, and the keeping of said information, would be very much appreciated. We will have readers who will learn from it for years to come. :)

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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Wow! That is a stunning piece of the type you usually see in museums rather than in private collections. I hope those tiny pieces bagged and on the black cloth behind the main skull piece don't belong to this as well--otherwise, it does look like a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. I would love to have the funds to purchase a piece of this stature but then I would probably spend those funds on something else instead. :) I'd be so leery about purchasing any Mongolian fossils even with a pretty solid provenance. I heard about a recent case of a person purchasing a painting of from a somewhat famous painter (though I was not familiar with the name). Turned out it was stolen from its rightful owners back during a rather nasty piece of history around the early 1940s. When the piece resurfaced in a recent auction after being "dark" for many decades, the auction was halted and the courts ruled that the piece should be returned to (the heirs of) the original owner. I don't think art collectors spending millions on paintings can get "provenance insurance" and though they probably won't go hungry after having their expensively purchased painting removed from their ownership and reassigned to the rightful owner, it can't be fun to have been the last person to have purchased it and end up now owning it. It would be like having a $100 bill that turns out to be counterfeit--only thousands of times worse!

 

It's a really cool skull but one that I'd never risk buying. If I could afford it, chances are it would probably end up being a fake sculpted out of plaster with a few real teeth. :o This one (to my completely uneducated eye) looks to be real and I hope you purchased this from a reliable dealer or through some means that ensured you of a solid provenance. If this were to have been a "modern" fossil (there's a oxymoron for you ;)) from the Mongolian region, it would very certainly be a piece that would be illegal to own outside of the region as China and Mongolia have enacted strict laws to try to prevent the loss of important fossils through the black market. In the same way that an air-tight provenance is critical in the realm of uber-expensive art, it is also the only thing that separates a legal fossil from an illegal fossil when it comes to this class of a specimen. It would make me too nervous to own such a piece. I'd suggest when you get it prepped and mounted, that you take a lot of photos and get a specific rider for your home insurance to cover it.

 

Thanks for posting such an impressive fossil. We don't get items like this very often--mainly due to the issues of legality. Please post images when the prep/mounting are complete.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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This is a very nice skull, but I can't quite accept the story. Were the 1918 discovery to be true, this would be the earliest documented dinosaur fossil from Mongolia. The early specimens recovered by the AMNH are not as well conserved as the recently collected material. This skull, to me appears to have been collected by more modern techniques.

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It is true, the first documented Protoceratops skulls weren't discovered until 1922 according to documents. This makes it very significant if it is true. I have found documentation that the two brothers did in fact server in the British Military from 1916-1918 in India. Still waiting on some more documentation. So we shall see. 

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13 hours ago, rfarrar said:

This is a very nice skull, but I can't quite accept the story. Were the 1918 discovery to be true, this would be the earliest documented dinosaur fossil from Mongolia. The early specimens recovered by the AMNH are not as well conserved as the recently collected material. This skull, to me appears to have been collected by more modern techniques.

There’s always the possibility that the story is legit and the specimen was collected but unrecognized for what it was and then prepped more recently.

 

There are field jackets in some museums that were collected long ago and wait to be opened up. Several years ago I read about a recently opened jacket from the late 1800’s that had been in the collection of one of the east coast museums that contained a new species of dinosaur when it was finally opened.

 

This scenario is much less likely than “the specimen was smuggled out and sold illegally” but it’s still possible.

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Amazing piece!

I am horrible with jigsaw pieces like that. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve collected something with pieces in the field and when I get home I can’t figure out what goes where. I’ve also started using Apoxie to fill in the gaps and help hold stuff together where glue doesn’t work.

I’ve started carrying cyanoacrylate with me in the field to stabilize it so I don’t have to do the jigsaw puzzle when I get home.

 

I personally would be concerned about shipping it to someone. We hear so many horror stories on here about how something was severely damaged or destroyed in shipping.

 

Best of luck. 

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