28 November 2020 | New Scientist | 23T
HE Duelling Dinosaurs
are just the sort of remains
that fossil fans dream
about. Encased in huge lumps
of tan sandstone are the dark
bones of two dinosaurs that
were buried together more
than 66 million years ago.
One of the fossils is a familiar
three-horned Triceratops. The
other is a probable young cousin
of Tyrannosaurus rex, a rare
representative of what the
“tyrant king” was like during its
gangly, awkward years. There is no
evidence the two dinosaurs died
in combat but they have still been
the subject of palaeontological
gossip for a decade.
Enough cash has now finally
been stumped up to give the
bones a home. Rather than being
bought by a private bidder, a
museum has paid – probably
millions – for the fossilised duo.
Although palaeontologists should
be able to examine the fossils,
bone buying is a dangerous game
and it isn’t clear that museums
should ever shell out for
specimens like this.
Commercial fossil hunter
Clayton Phipps and his colleagues
found the skeletons in 2006
on a private ranch in Montana
and undertook the excavations
themselves with an eye towards
a future sale. Years before, a
near-complete T. rex nicknamed
Sue had been purchased for
more than $8 million at auction,
starting off a commercial fossil
boom that started ratcheting up
MIthe market value for dinosaurs.
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Dinosaurs started to kick off in- Word among experts was
that the owners of the fossils
were looking to sell to a national
museum for a price exceeding
$9 million. Yet no one bit. So
the Duelling Dinosaurs went
to auction at Bonhams auction
house in 2013 but failed to meet
the reserve price. It seemed as if
the bones were in limbo – invisible
to science for not being in a
museum, but far too pricey
for any institution to afford.
The North Carolina Museum
of Natural Sciences has now
announced that it has bought the
fossils, although it hasn’t said
how much it spent. We don’t yet
know what the Duelling Dinosaurs
fossil will be able to tell us about
life in the Cretaceous, but I
worry that combined with the
record-breaking auction of Stan,
a T. rex sold for $31.8 million
earlier this year, we may be seeing
a price boom that harms science.
The US doesn’t treat fossils
found on private land as part of its
natural history heritage, as many
other places do. A landowner
is free to turn away academic
palaeontologists in favour
of commercial fossil hunters
who promise big payouts.Palaeontology often operates
on a shoestring budget. The
millions spent on single
specimens could fund research
departments, graduate students
and field expeditions for decades.
A single department could find
many more fossils and generate
much more research with the
same fundraising effort, but,
as things stand, star specimens
are more likely to draw dollars
as well as attention.
The issue doesn’t just affect
the US. The burgeoning
commercial market for prize
fossils inadvertently fuels black
market sales, whether that is
tyrannosaurs illegally exported
from Mongolia or “blood amber”
sold in Chinese markets that fuels
genocidal conflict in Myanmar.
Change may be slow in coming.
Sweeping legislation similar to the
Historical Resources Act of Alberta
in Canada, which requires finds to
be documented and assessed by
experts after discovery, could help.
At the moment, experts face a
devil’s bargain of either buying
ethically questionable fossils
or watching them disappear into
inaccessible private collections.
On the open fossil market,
scientific desirability often
trumps ethics. The gleam of a
tyrannosaur’s teeth is beautiful,
but the petrified smile should
say “buyer beware”. ❚The cost of fossil auctions
The sale of the amazing Duelling Dinosaurs fossil to a museum
may do palaeontology more harm than good, says Riley BlackRiley Black is the author
of Skeleton Keys: The
secret life of bone. She
lives in Salt Lake City, Utah