Are We Running Out Of Quality Fossils?

[caldigger]

Perhaps some of the decrease is caused by the general expansion of mankind. It seems society is moving further away from congested cities, which means houses and housing tracks are being built in more rural areas. Open land is shrinking, making many of those places we like to visit off limits to wandering collectors. Many of the easy collecting areas are being picked over. What we really need is to scrap off some serious overburden and expose new sites. But there are most likely many reasons for the lack of "QUALITY" specimens presently on the market. Slow economies, dealers holding on to them until they can get the prices they want, media driven demand, a greater awareness of internet information ( those interesting "rocks" we've been picking up all these years can now be identified as fossils, and thus an interest in collecting is created).

[rylawz]

oh I get some good deals from the internet, even ebay. I have made most of my connections in Europe from ebay. I bought a mammoth tooth in museum quality for 90$ in my last bulk deal no joke. check my page in a couple days, I was planning on posting a topic anyways. -Riley

[Scylla]

We have met the enemy and he is us. I think the easy availability of information from sites such as this has made hunting 100% easier. So now more people can successfully hunt the fossils. The other factors such as closing national borders to fossil trade (no more Peruvian Megs, Brazilian Santana fish, or Chinese anything) and a richer world that can afford luxury items must have a huge effect too. Could the flood of B and C grade fossils on the market just make it harder to see the few quality offerings? But at least sea level change hasn't swallowed up all the coastal sites. Yet.

[rylawz]

You just gotta dig for deals, they are definitely out there

[Wrangellian]

It sounds to me like all of the suggested reasons are possible and are working together.

Good point about us - I wonder how many people come online and search TFF for into on where to look/etc, then go there and scour the site and sell them on ebay or whatever. I haven't seen anything from my local mountain on there yet...

[pinkpantherbeekeeper]

Talking about the ease of finding information and availablity of product, reminds me of when the antique roadshow on pbs came out. After that show came out... bahh... prices of antiques and most things collectible went up in price in the first years that followed. Goodwill's seemed to be more picked through and garage sales had some silly prices on stuff. Obviously eBay has dropped the floor on several markets and helped even supply and demand. If you haven't seen good stuff in a Goodwill that is because of shopgoodwill.com.

I digress... I agree with being our own worse enemy. More easily obtained information, more easily obtained product.

[Auspex]

"Are We Running Out Of Quality Fossils?"

Presuming that the question is directed toward amateur collectors, one would still have to define and quantify not only "quality", but in so doing take into account that there are many, many kinds of fossils, and even more categories of collecting them.

There is simply no one answer to what, on the surface, seems like a simple question.

By their nature, collectors are never really satisfied; the bar keeps going up on what constitutes a 'worthy' addition, and the gratification of a new acquisition becomes a rarer occurrence.

[Missourian]

In some ways, the world is just slowly changing. It's not quite like it was a number of years ago.

- More and more 'no trespassing' signs and purple paint are showing up. My favorite are the ones that mention hidden camera surveillance.

- I've had more encounters with law enforcement than before. Most are cool. Others.... not so much.

- People are generally nastier. I had one guy harass me about my backpack. Others listed how much fines and jail time I/we will get once the cops show up (one happened at a frequented road cut). I haven't even run into the unscrupulous types yet....

- The general litigiousness of our society is slowly increasing. Pretty soon, everything will be off limits if there is a chance someone gets as much as a hangnail.

As the noose slowly tightens everywhere (and I imagine things are the same all over), fewer and fewer fossils will be available. I may have to retreat to microfossils or perhaps stamp collecting. It's getting close to not being worth the bother anymore.

[Ramo]

Keep your head up Missourian, come on out to my neck of the woods, and I can help you find some cool stuff. I had to live in this area for 4 years to finally begin to figure out how to find the productive areas. If anyone comes out around here to "strike it rich" finding cool plates with shark teeth and bones, they are most likely going to go home empty handed. Having a plate on my truck from this state, and this county really helps to get me into places others would have trouble. Besides, people pass up my area on the way to the chalk out west. This may not be what some call "quality fossils", but I do.

Ramo

[Wrangellian]

I agree with Missourian. I will add that, even when people try to keep a spot open to collecting like they did at McAbee (BC), there is still no guarantee that the gov't won't come in and shut it down either because it's important to science or for any other reason (too dangerous, etc)!

[Ridgehiker]

Wrangellian...that has happened to me twice. Thus why I am reluctant to give out specific info or get too cozy with vertebrate 'experts'. Fortunately when I worked with corals and brachiopods, nobody was territorial.

Speaking of McAbee....there's a few other less known sites in the area in which I found even more specimens.. Take the back roads and randomly sample outcrops. We had an Alberta Paleo trip to McAbee and what I kept thinking while we were there was of one site I had collected at the day before....found as many good specimens in 20 minutes as a few hours at McAbee.

[Missourian]

Keep your head up Missourian, come on out to my neck of the woods, and I can help you find some cool stuff. I had to live in this area for 4 years to finally begin to figure out how to find the productive areas. If anyone comes out around here to "strike it rich" finding cool plates with shark teeth and bones, they are most likely going to go home empty handed. Having a plate on my truck from this state, and this county really helps to get me into places others would have trouble. Besides, people pass up my area on the way to the chalk out west. This may not be what some call "quality fossils", but I do.

Thanks Ramo.

As I think about it, my approach has evolved into 'aiming low' and enjoying the little things. To me, things like forams, sponges and calcareous algae are just as interesting as trilobites, crinoids and vertebrates, but I don't have to worry about competition from other collectors or regulatory red tape. They are just there waiting to be found -- in abundance in many cases. If a 'big ticket item' does turn up, then it's all gravy. In some cases, I'm content just to study the stratigraphy or pick up an interesting rock here or there.

On the other hand, it's always a treat to head out into the Cretaceous of Kansas -- or wherever -- when the opportunity arises.

[Ridgehiker]

Missourian, true. I dissolve limestone to get out Paleozoic shark teeth....however, a byproduct is conodonts and Now I look more forward to finding these. Fortunately, they are almost infinite in numbers and 'nobody else cares'.

[Wrangellian]

Wrangellian...that has happened to me twice. Thus why I am reluctant to give out specific info or get too cozy with vertebrate 'experts'. Fortunately when I worked with corals and brachiopods, nobody was territorial.

Speaking of McAbee....there's a few other less known sites in the area in which I found even more specimens.. Take the back roads and randomly sample outcrops. We had an Alberta Paleo trip to McAbee and what I kept thinking while we were there was of one site I had collected at the day before....found as many good specimens in 20 minutes as a few hours at McAbee.

I've heard of those sites, I think John (jbswake) knows where they all are, but I have yet to make it up there to collect. I am glad I was able to collect McAbee Proper a couple times before it went off-limits. I am reluctant to reveal my sites to the 'pros' too for specific reasons I won't go into here but we all know the general reasons.

[pinkpantherbeekeeper]

Hey quality finds make the news in my glaciated neck of the woods. Few months ago when we had a spring monsoon, it washed away a few hundred feet of road and unearthed a few mammoth bones! Made a spot on the local news.

[Terry Dactyll]

I think with financially driven fossil collecting, easy accessible knowledge open to everyone via the internet and a subsequent increase in interest in fossils thats generated, putting a good quality collection together today would be a little more difficult than it has been over the last few decades... the slow erosion rate at coastal outcrops isn't producing sufficient material to go round and inland quarries are having a rethink about access for collectors, usually citing health & safety as the reason to refuse access although seeing the material for sale on ebay doesn't go down very well either I have found...

[PaleoTerra]

Ok, so here's what I do, and I'm well aware it might not be appreciated by the overall collecting community, but then honestly, I'm not collecting for others, I'm collecting for my daughters and my own interest in these wonderful treasures of time and nature. When I go to a site that is obviously getting a bit too much attention for the erosional rate it is capable of, I clean it out. Sometimes I will even hit a site repeatedly over several months and take even the fragmentary stuff just so that the site is so discouraging to the less passionate that they will no longer visit the site with any regularity. This includes well known smaller roadcuts and lake areas. Do this over a few months and the activity will usually dry up. Like game culling to preserve next years numbers, the site will recover. This is especially true of easily eroded clays and glauconites. Less true of course of harder matrix, but still applicable. Do this, wait about four to five good hard rains and usually you will find that there will be vastly more material to collect the next time you visit the site. As there will be for anybody else that has decided to "give it another try". Once the site begins to receive a great deal of attention again, I repeat this process. It does also help to have a very good eye for fossilised material and I will collect everything from near microscopic and up. This being said, I never "dig" a site, I don't even own a pick hammer or the like, and I always leave only footprints. I only surface collect no matter where I'm at, and the only tool I employ in this is a walking stick and a small metal spike for "popping" fossils out of hardened mud or off the surface of weathered rocks. Doing things this way means that when others are walking out of a well known site with a half a dozen or so acceptable specimens, I am walking out with bags full of complete or unique fossils!

I should also note, that I rarely sell any of this material. I have in the past sold some of my seconds on ebay to help offset travel expenses. Otherwise, they are methodically prepped, labeled, and stowed away in a large closet, while the very best stuff is put into wall-hanging shadowbox collections for any and all visitors to see.

One thing that I'd personally like to see is an increase in the number of castings made available from personal collections. I think it would be interesting to create a more popular trade in well made replica material so that some of the truly amazing fossils may make their way to a wider group of interest and study. I believe it would greatly accellerate our collective knowledge in the fields of paleontological study and could lessen the collecting burden on field locations by those looking for the perfect looking fossils. Also, by making available the important, but often hidden away, specimens to scientists, it might help to even lighten the law-making regarding collecting, since many of the laws were actually put in place for fears that the most important specimens would end up in private collections before they could be properly studied!

Edited September 8, 2013 by PaleoTerra

[Ridgehiker]

Paleoterra, interesting perspective. Also, so true about eroding clays. There's always lots of.vertebrate material in the badlands. A good rain reveals a bone protruding, glean of a tooth, etc.

A lot depends on where one lives. I'm fortunate to be in a region where the potential for new sites is unlimited. There's just the right balance of having to make the physical effort to access otherwise unexplored outcrops and being rewarded for that effort 'every so often'. I enjoy the search as much as the actual finds. It would take a hundred life times to climb, let alone barely scan the eyes over every mountain scree slope.

Also, , 'quality' needs to be defined. I don't equate it with what's commonly collected. I'm keen on brachiopods, Paleozoic shark teeth and certain microfossils. Few others are out looking for these...no competition.

Not a hundredth of the vertical slopes in this view have been climbed and, if they have, unlikely by anyone who would recognize fossils.

Edited September 8, 2013 by Ridgehiker

[rylawz]

you just have to 'dig' no pun intended. good cheap fossils are out there

[NZ_Fossil_Collecta]

Well, I do not know much about quality specimens drying up but put on some rubber waterproof boots, get muddy, and hey, you just might find a new fossil bed. I know becuase I did this and found something that I am still waiting to be ID'd, but it may be a kind of copal.

[NZ_Fossil_Collecta]

Ok, so here's what I do, and I'm well aware it might not be appreciated by the overall collecting community, but then honestly, I'm not collecting for others, I'm collecting for my daughters and my own interest in these wonderful treasures of time and nature. When I go to a site that is obviously getting a bit too much attention for the erosional rate it is capable of, I clean it out. Sometimes I will even hit a site repeatedly over several months and take even the fragmentary stuff just so that the site is so discouraging to the less passionate that they will no longer visit the site with any regularity. This includes well known smaller roadcuts and lake areas. Do this over a few months and the activity will usually dry up. Like game culling to preserve next years numbers, the site will recover. This is especially true of easily eroded clays and glauconites. Less true of course of harder matrix, but still applicable. Do this, wait about four to five good hard rains and usually you will find that there will be vastly more material to collect the next time you visit the site. As there will be for anybody else that has decided to "give it another try". Once the site begins to receive a great deal of attention again, I repeat this process. It does also help to have a very good eye for fossilised material and I will collect everything from near microscopic and up. This being said, I never "dig" a site, I don't even own a pick hammer or the like, and I always leave only footprints. I only surface collect no matter where I'm at, and the only tool I employ in this is a walking stick and a small metal spike for "popping" fossils out of hardened mud or off the surface of weathered rocks. Doing things this way means that when others are walking out of a well known site with a half a dozen or so acceptable specimens, I am walking out with bags full of complete or unique fossils!

I should also note, that I rarely sell any of this material. I have in the past sold some of my seconds on ebay to help offset travel expenses. Otherwise, they are methodically prepped, labeled, and stowed away in a large closet, while the very best stuff is put into wall-hanging shadowbox collections for any and all visitors to see.

One thing that I'd personally like to see is an increase in the number of castings made available from personal collections. I think it would be interesting to create a more popular trade in well made replica material so that some of the truly amazing fossils may make their way to a wider group of interest and study. I believe it would greatly accellerate our collective knowledge in the fields of paleontological study and could lessen the collecting burden on field locations by those looking for the perfect looking fossils. Also, by making available the important, but often hidden away, specimens to scientists, it might help to even lighten the law-making regarding collecting, since many of the laws were actually put in place for fears that the most important specimens would end up in private collections before they could be properly studied!

seems like a good idea.