Denver Fowlers comments on the Sale of Reconstructed Fossils

[Troodon]

Interesting twitter post by Paleontologist Denver Fowler:

"On fossil sales, journalists are much too lazy, preferring to stoke perceived conflict between academia vs commercial collection. I think a rather cleverer (and real) story concerns how much of the fossils for sale are reconstructions or chimaeras"

 

"In these times when purchasing fossils or art is considered an investment, then I think there is some responsibility on the seller to be able to guarantee authenticity."

 

"If a dinosaur fossil does not include, for example, a bone map, then it probably is because the fossil is junk. Speaking from a sales background, a seller should include as much info that authenticates the sale as possible."

 

https://t.co/9libwWSdGO
(https://twitter.com/df9465/status/1650531621316206592?t=eEOkNtjt8gL44VQ357zRsA&s=03) 

 

[Bobby Rico]

I agree and on a much smaller note.  If  you where at a fashion fair/show I don’t think you would see for sale fake Nike running shoes but at fossil show I have seen posted here there 100s faked Bugs , ammonites, turtle heads and dinosaur claws . I can not understand how it is allowed ethically and so publicly. At the end it is still counterfeit goods.
 

cheers Bobby 

Edited April 24, 2023 by Bobby Rico

[hadrosauridae]

16 hours ago, Bobby Rico said:

I agree and on a much smaller note.  If  you where at a fashion fair/show I don’t think you would see for sale fake Nike running shoes but at fossil show I have seen posted here there 100s faked Bugs , ammonites, turtle heads and dinosaur claws . I can not understand how it is allowed ethically and so publicly. At the end it is still counterfeit goods.
 

cheers Bobby 

 

 

Most likely it is "allowed" because it is a very slippery slope to begin requiring any type of "proof" of authenticity.  Paperwork and certificates are worthless.  In the end, the companies hosting the shows exist only to make money, and that is made by selling floor space and tickets at the door.

 

I'm more perturbed when I see those fakes for sale in B&M (Brick and Mortar) fossil shops.   If the shop owner is too stupid to realize he is buying and reselling fakes, I can't trust anything in his shop.  If the shop owner is knowingly buying and reselling fakes, I can't trust anything in his shop.

[Bobby Rico]

1 hour ago, hadrosauridae said:

Most likely it is "allowed" because it is a very slippery slope to begin requiring any type of "proof" of authenticity.  Paperwork and certificates are worthless.  In the end, the companies hosting the shows exist only to make money, and that is made by selling floor space and tickets at the door.

I understand this but does this mean there is no government body that deals with counterfeits. Regardless of the product it can’t not illegal to mislead the public buyers this way. I wonder if is it the same regarding antiques v repos. I sometimes go to antique fairs in the U.K. and some stall owners sell repo but not usually sold as antiques . 
 

Regarding the B and M shops I am sure they know what they buying if they see tables full of almost identical fossils . It sad to me that shop owners and the show organisers are turning a blind eye to this.  

 This has made think how wonderful this forum is. The members here who spend so much time been real patient identifying and educating to pitfalls of fake fossils almost daily. 

 

Edited April 24, 2023 by Bobby Rico

[Troodon]

It's a real issue at shows and even if we wanted to do something who are the fossil police that can identify fake versus real?  Not very practical and you just cannot toss a vendor since most have a combo of real and fake and everyone is there to make money.   Outside of this issue the elephant in the room is the amount of misidentified material you see at these shows.  Very prevalent with Dinosaur items and even the advanced collectors can be duped.  Most are because of ignorance on the part of the seller but its real.

 

Unfortunately the real answer is "caveat emptor" let the buyer beware.   If you go to shows or participate in an auction your antennas should be constantly on alert and NEVER trust what is told to you.  Check and verify what you see and do not assume the information provided is accurate.

 

 

[Bobby Rico]

2 minutes ago, Troodon said:

Unfortunately the real answer is "caveat emptor" let the buyer beware.   If you go to shows or participate in an auction your antennas should be constantly on alert and NEVER trust what is told to you.  Check and verify what you see and do not assume the information provided is accurate.

The sad thing I thing is  mate is that the buyers who buys these fakes are probably thinking because they sold so openly they must be legitimate . In the U.K. the fossil police would be HM Customs and Excise but I don’t think the fossil market on the U.K. would be big enough to bother them. 

[Troodon]

5 minutes ago, Bobby Rico said:

openly they must be legitimate .

Not necessarily.   At a Tucson show a few years ago I ran across a merchant buying, for his store, fossils at a Moroccan tent dealer.  I clearly overheard them talking about them being fake so the merchant was very aware of what they were. 

[Bobby Rico]

12 hours ago, Troodon said:

a Tucson show a few years ago I ran across a merchant buying, for his store, fossils at a Moroccan tent dealer.  I clearly overheard them talking about them being fake so the merchant was very aware of what they were. 

I think that in itself is shocking but I was more thing about the parents with their kids. As I said shopkeepers know what they buying regarding this material. 

[jpc]

B and M?  

 

[Bobby Rico]

1 minute ago, jpc said:

B and M?  

 

Bricks and Mortar meaning real shop not online .

[hadrosauridae]

38 minutes ago, jpc said:

B and M?  

 

 

36 minutes ago, Bobby Rico said:

Bricks and Mortar meaning real shop not online .

 

Yes, meaning a physical store location.

[hadrosauridae]

2 hours ago, Bobby Rico said:

I understand this but does this mean there is no government body that deals with counterfeits. Regardless of the product it can’t not illegal to mislead the public buyers this way. I wonder if is it the same regarding antiques v repos. I sometimes go to antique fairs in the U.K. and some stall owners sell repo but not usually sold as antiques . 
 

Regarding the B and M shops I am sure they know what they buying if they see tables full of almost identical fossils . It sad to me that shop owners and the show organisers are turning a blind eye to this.  

 This has made think how wonderful this forum is. The members here who spend so much time been real patient identifying and educating to pitfalls of fake fossils almost daily. 

 

 

They're not counterfeits.  Thats a term applying to licensed trademarks and intellectual property (designs).  There are no "fossil police"  and attempting to create one would be exceedingly expensive (you would have to hire "experts" in the every type of fossil) and would probably be quickly sued out of existence the first time they deny a sale or confiscate a "fake" that is later proven real.

[jdp]

5 hours ago, Troodon said:

Outside of this issue the elephant in the room is the amount of misidentified material you see at these shows.  Very prevalent with Dinosaur items and even the advanced collectors can be duped.  Most are because of ignorance on the part of the seller but its real.

 

I mean, even museum collections have misidentified material throughout, and those are curated by the experts. At some point you have to expect a certain amount of error, especially with isolated bones or broken material. If you care about a specific taxonomic ID, or if the specific ID has major implications for price and value, then you kinda just need to invest the time into becoming enough of an expert to serve your purposes.

[Missourian]

I think it would be proper to reconstruct an incomplete fossil by 'filling out' the missing portion in a contrasting shade or color, but not add any ornamentation. An example (Domatoceras umbilicatum, Pennsylvanian):

 

 

If the various fossils for sale were treated like this, they wouldn't be as pretty, but they would be true. Sadly, this will never happen.

[Bobby Rico]

11 hours ago, hadrosauridae said:

They're not counterfeits.  Thats a term applying to licensed trademarks and intellectual property (designs). 

The  English Oxford Dictionary

 

 Counterfeit made to look like the original of something, usually for dishonest or illegal purposes: 

 

verb

imitate fraudulently.

"my signature is extremely hard to counterfeit"

 

I don’t want spilt hairs I just feel it wrong, morally, to knowingly deceive people . 

[Kane]

An admittedly anecdotal, but positive story. I got to know a rock shop owner who specializes in mostly crystals, but would go to the shows and pick up a few of the typical cheap and abundant fossils like the polished Madagascar ammonites, etc. I did let him know that some of the Mosasaur jaws were mostly fabricated (teeth emplaced in modern bone and cement), and he was surprised. He dropped the price and next to it placed a note that these were composites. He did further research and was shocked to learn how pervasive fakes and composites are in the fossil world. 

 

I drop in on that little shop every few months for a bit of a natter, and he almost always has a few more pieces in the back he is hesitant to put on display until I can identify them. He sometimes gets them from old estates and such, and almost always wants to gift me a bunch of them as thanks for the assistance. 

[Troodon]

7 hours ago, jdp said:

then you kinda just need to invest the time into becoming enough of an expert to serve your purposes.

Unfortunately too many collectors don't take the time to do exactly that but trust that sellers are "experts" and know what they have.  Guess why the Forum is alive and active to help them in so many different ways.

[jdp]

I feel like if you're buying an expensive item as an investment or show piece, you'd want to do your due diligence to make sure it is what the seller says it is. Like, an art collector wouldn't buy a painting for a half-million dollars just on the seller's say-so that it is a Picasso; you'd hire someone to appraise it. But, it seems that for a lot of relatively high-end sales of dinosaur fossils, this step just doesn't exist, and I don't know if it's because there aren't experts providing this sort of appraisal service, or if it's because so many of the sales happen so quickly and in show-type environments that there is no real opportunity to fly in an expert to look at the fossil and give an appraisal.

 

For a lot of fossils, I think the cost is so low that it doesn't make sense to appraise (e.g. a lot of the stuff claimed to be Trimerorhachis belongs to an assortment of other early Permian tetrapod, but it's also selling for relatively little), but I can't imagine buying something for over $10k without a really clear idea of what it is I am getting and what its market value actually is.

[Wrangellian]

23 hours ago, Missourian said:

I think it would be proper to reconstruct an incomplete fossil by 'filling out' the missing portion in a contrasting shade or color, but not add any ornamentation. An example (Domatoceras umbilicatum, Pennsylvanian):

 

 

If the various fossils for sale were treated like this, they wouldn't be as pretty, but they would be true. Sadly, this will never happen.

I was thinking the same thing.... fuzzy boundary between real and fake when you consider partially reconstructed items, but it's fine if you can tell what parts are reconstructed.

I'm glad I'm not a bone/tooth guy. There are enough fake inverts out there as it is.

 

BTW Your link doesn't work on my end - "404 not found".

 

[Troodon]

6 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

On 4/24/2023 at 10:56 PM, Missourian said:

Expand  

I was thinking the same thing.... fuzzy boundary between real and fake when you consider partially reconstructed items, but it's fine if you can tell what parts are reconstructed.

Yes appropriate for the science community but that does not help these auction houses maximize $$$$  Bone maps at a minimum

[jdp]

If I'm spending upwards of a million dollars on a skeleton, I want quarry maps and comprehensive photos throughout preparation.

[jpc]

2 minutes ago, jdp said:

If I'm spending upwards of a million dollars on a skeleton, I want quarry maps and comprehensive photos throughout preparation.

Indeed, but you are an educated person who probably doesn't have a million to spare.  The target market is the fool with more money than they know what to do with. 

[hadrosauridae]

49 minutes ago, jpc said:

Indeed, but you are an educated person who probably doesn't have a million to spare.  The target market is the fool with more money than they know what to do with. 

 

[jdp]

59 minutes ago, jpc said:

Indeed, but you are an educated person who probably doesn't have a million to spare.  The target market is the fool with more money than they know what to do with. 

 

three for three

[jdp]

What I will say is that a lot of these seem to be selling to well-funded museums who want a big display fossil without committing to a long drawn-out preparation and exhibit development process. That may change, but these do seem to be destined for public-ish exhibition spaces, not private home collections. So "idiot with a lot of money" is not really the market so much as it is "museum in Europe, East Asia, or the Middle East that wants a centerpiece acquisition."