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GEOL 204 Dinosaurs, Early Humans, Ancestors & Evolution:
The Fossil Record of Vanished Worlds of the Prehistoric Past

Spring Semester 2023
What Good is the Fossil Record? Perspectives of the Prehistoric Past


Booth for selling ammonoids, nautiloids, trilobites, and others at a Moroccan market place

"The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward." -- Winston Churchill, 1944

"An evolutionary perspective of our place in the history of the earth reminds us that Homo sapiens sapiens has occupied the planet for the tiniest fraction of that planet's four and a half thousand million years of existence. In many ways we are a biological accident, the product of countless propitious circumstances. As we peer back through the fossil record, through layer upon layer of long-extinct species, many of which thrived far longer than the human species is ever likely to do, we are reminded of our mortality as a species. There is no law that declares the human animal to be different, as seen in this broad biological perspective, from any other animal. There is no law that declares the human species to be immortal." -- Richard E. Leakey & Roger A. Lewis. (1977), Origins: What New Discoveries Reveal About the Emergence of Our Species and Its Possible Future.


BIG QUESTIONS: How do we balance public and private interests in fossil specimens? How do scientists get their information out to the public?

What Good is a Fossil Record?

That is to say, what benefit does society receive from the existence of fossils of the ancient world? There are many of them that are scientific:

But are there any pragmatic benefits? YES!

And some benefits are even aesthetic:

This final lecture we'll look at some of these big issues of the fossil record in society: who owns the fossil record? And where we should go to get information from the fossil record.


Who Owns the Fossil Record? Issues Around the Commercial Trade in Fossils

Some fossils obviously ARE commodities: coal, petroleum, chalk, diatomite, etc. And as such they are commercially bought and sold.

But what about the sort of fossils that this course focused on: the body and trace fossils of organisms as object?

In order to look into this, we need to consider the different types of people who search for fossils, and their motivations.

There are professional paleontologists: normally motivated by research, and normally employed by museums, universities, and other academic institutions. However, some might be employed by resource-management organizations (such as the US or state geological surveys; National Parks or Monuments; state parks; etc.): some of these may do research as well, but often they have the additional job of overseeing the protection of fossil sites and so forth. (And these jobs aren't mutually exclusive: the recently-retired State Paleontologist of Montana was also a Professor at Montana State University AND a curator of the Museum of the Rockies!) Professional paleontologists are the only group likely to develop major expeditions, and are the only group likely to prospect in formations that aren't yet known to produce lots of fossils: after all, discovery is our job! Given professionals tend to specialize on particular taxa (and thus might not be limited to working in just one region), but some work mostly on particular faunas or formations.

Another group is avocational collectors: hobbyists, enthusiasts, "amateurs" (in both the sense that the don't get paid to find fossils, and that they do it because they love it.) Avocational collectors are BY FAR the largest community. The tend to generate interest in fossils, and in Nature and Science, among the general public. Many important finds have been made by avocational collectors (which they often donate to museum collections). In general they tend mostly to prospect sites known to produce large quantities of common fossils (after all, they are more likely to do this for a day on the weekend, not a six-week expedition.)

The smallest group are commercial collectors. They tend to specialize in a particular geographic region and a particular set of formations known to produce good fossils: after all, they are doing this for a livelihood, so they need to have some likely return on their investment. In some cases, they are the best outfits able to field crews and run preparation labs in the regions they operate, although some teams might be ill-equipped or relatively unskilled (but the same can be said about some avocational and professionals...) In some cases, the commercial collectors cooperate with researchers to bring the fossils into the public trust; however, in some cases (as discussed below), there are conflicts between the goals of professionals and commercials.

Some historical commercial collectors were major contributors in the history of paleontology, such as Mary Anning (1799-1847) of England and the Sternberg Family of the western U.S. (The latter are an extension of the practice of hired crews used by the professional paleontologists: a very common practice in the 19th Century in the American West.)

Proponents of commercial collecting and sales of fossils put forth some important arguments:

(Here is a commentary taking the pro-commercial collector position).

However, others point out that there are many problems with the commercial collection of fossils:

(Here is a commentary taking the anti-commercial collection position.)

The most famous story of a conflict between commercial collectors and professional paleontologists, as well as issues of land management, Native American rights, and much more, is the case of "Sue" the Tyrannosaurus rex. In 1990 the Black Hills Institute (BHI, a commercial collecting firm operating out of Hill City, South Dakota) was exploring for fossils in the Hell Creek Formation (the latest Cretaceous of western North America) on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Team member Sue Hendrickson went off on her own and discovered what turned out to be the largest (at the time of discovery) and most complete (even to this day) T. rex skeleton ever found. The BHI dug up the specimen and brought it back to Hill City. However, a dispute arose: the land owner (Maurice Williams) claimed that the $5000 they had paid him was NOT for the specimen, but simply the right to prospect his land; Williams argued that the specimen belonged to him, not BHI. Because Williams is a member of the Sioux nation, this dispute became an issue of federal law. In 1992 the FBI and National Guard came to BHI and took control of the fossil. A legal decision in 1995 determined that "Sue" was indeed Williams property. The specimen went to the auction block at Sotheby's, where for $8,362,500 the Field Museum in Chicago acquired the specimen (backed by Disney and McDonalds).

(The story of "Sue" has been the focus of two different documentary: a markedly pro-Larson one from 2014, and a more balanced one by the TV series NOVA from 1997.


Fossils in the US and Abroad

In the United States, fossils are generally regarded as mineral rights rather than antiquities (such as artifacts and human remains). The laws that govern them depends on the type of land concerned:

These protections don't always work, though: they have to actually be enforced. Mismanagement of Fossil Cycad National Monument in the 1920-1950s was such that people would just take away fossils from the Monument! With no more fossils to display or protect, the National Monument was decommissioned in 1957.

Other nations have different laws. In some fossils are regarded as protected antiquities or as part of the natural heritage, and are the property of the State (or the Crown), regardless of the private vs. public nature of the land they are found on. In others there are no protections anywhere except their national parks. And many nations have protections that effectively exist only on paper: big "grey" markets (really black markets, but with protection of government officials having been paid off.)

Recent years have seen the repatriation of illegally acquired fossils to the country of their origin: in particular Mongolia and China.

A particularly famous case of repatriation, however, actually removed fossils from the public trust. This is the case of Kennewick Man, an 8.9-9 ka skull discovered in 1996 from the banks of the Columbia River in Washington State. The morphology of the skull is more like a Polynesian or European than a Native American, so some paleoanthropologists suggested this was NOT from a population that arrived over Bering, but instead from some other part of the world. Local Native American tribes, however, argued that this specimen was one of their owned, and following the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) should be returned to them for burial. In 2004 the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit argued that the specimen was too far removed from present day to be securely related ethnically to any extant group. New DNA analysis published in 2015 did actually demonstrate the close genetic affinity of Kennewick Man to native populations of the American Northwest, so it was announced in Spring 2016 that the specimen will be repatriated.


Paleontology and the Public Eye

Paleontology needs to get its information out from the lab to the public. What are the ways this can happen?

The technical literature is a traditional method, but that is really for communication of scientist-to-scientist. Public talks are equally old, and still pretty common, but are now enhanced by such things as outreach websites (like the Witmer Lab site at Ohio University.) Or there are site-based outreach, of which museums are the main method.

Of course, science news is one way, but the news media have their own agenda. Most importantly, of course, news reports are brief, but science is in the details.

The blogosphere allows for more detailed scientific information, but not sites are equally reliable or useful. Some are by professional scientists; others by highly knowledgeable science writers; but some are just by fans who might not know the professional information as well. More problematic, though, are websites by anti-scientific organizations or by people promoting fringe ideas.


So, What Should Everyone Know About the Prehistoric Past?

What are the main "take aways" from a course like this? What should everyone in the public know about the prehistoric past? Here are my suggestions:


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Last modified: 8 May 2023

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The author giving a public talk at the Carter County Museum in Ekalaka, MT, in 2012