On private land, the landowner owns them, and has the right to decide their fate. However, any vertebrate fossils collected on federal land must end up in a museum, not a private collection. And that's just fine with the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, notes Michael Woodburne, emeritus professor of geology at the University of California, Riverside.
Ideal dinosaur-hunting terrain in Montana, home-away-from-home for the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum's dinosaur dig. © Jeff Miller/UW-Madison Office of News and Public Affairs.
The Antiquities Act of 1906 gives special protection to vertebrate fossils, he points out. Private collectors can take a reasonable amount of common invertebrates (defined) from federal land (but not national parks and wilderness areas). Federal law says nothing about who can collect what on private land, explaining why Sue's owner, Maurice Williams, is being allowed to put her up for auction next spring.
Here's more on permits for fossil-hunting on federal land.
Woodburne, the co-chair of the government liaison committee of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, a group of paleontologists that has spoken on the issue, says the society opposed the attempt to loosen this federal regulation that was introduced in the last session of Congress. The problem, he says, is that fossils have changed from objects of scientific value to curiosities or objects of art. And as such, they will be removed from their rightful place as the subject for public scientific study. "At stake is really the loss to the public domain of education and scientific information to the private sector," he says. "The American public should not be shortchanged of their resources. That's the basic principle we're trying to support and protect." The public is well served by existing restrictions on collecting on federal land, he maintains.
Driving the privatization of fossil specimens, Woodburne says, is the "increasing commercialization" of fossil collecting, as mirrored in the rising prices of natural history objects in general. "We certainly would not be interested in this commercialization bleeding over onto federal land."
Woodburne maintains that "the idea that [private collectors] will benefit the public domain is false," since their motive is profit, not science. He acknowledges, however, that many of the most important discoveries in paleontology have come from amateurs.
