Rich people are buying up dinosaurs because museums are too poor to get them
WRITTEN BY
Adam Epstein
1 hour ago
On June 4, an auction house in Paris will put a highly coveted item on the block: A nearly complete skeleton of a carnivorous dinosaur, almost 9 meters (30 feet) long, believed to have lived during the late Jurassic era 154 million years ago. The world’s paleontologists would love to get their hands on the skeleton, which they suspect is a member of a previously undiscovered species. Instead, a private buyer is likely to snatch it up.
Museums and scientists increasingly lack the funds to buy dinosaur fossils, which can be auctioned off for enormous sums, an article in the scientific journal Nature yesterday (June 1) explains. This particular fossil, excavated in Wyoming between 2013 and 2015, is expected to go for €1.2 million–1.8 million (US$1.4 million–2.1 million).
David Polly, the president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, tells Nature that such pricey dinosaur auctions are becoming more common. “Any auction likely to generate a high market value is of concern, because science generally operates on a low budget,” he said. “We don’t have money to pay people to collect fossils or to buy them on the open market.”
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is asking the auction house, Aguttes, to cancel the sale. “Fossil specimens that are sold into private hands are lost to science,” a May 17 letter explains, arguing that “scientifically important vertebrate fossils are part of our collective natural heritage and deserve to be held in public trust.”
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https://qz.com/1295534/dinosaur-skeleton-auctions-mean-that-important-fossils-are-going-to-rich-people-instead-of-museums/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Most of her collection are ones she found. Sometimes she bought collections from fellow fossil hunters who needed the money.
She does allow study of fossils in her collection and if they are of scientific importance she has donated them to museums.
In fact, that is how she got a species named after her!
Quick Facts
Common Name: Fite’s saber-tooth cat
Rhizosmilodon fiteae is a small-sized, saber-toothed cat known only from Florida; but most species of felids have large geographic ranges, so it would not be surprising to find its fossils in other areas of North America.
Rhizosmilodon fitae weighed about 165 lbs., the same as a medium-sized, modern jaguar (Panthera onca) or slightly larger than an average modern cougar (Puma concolor).
It was most likely primarily an ambush predator, and probably preferred prey such as deer, peccaries, small tapirs, and small horses.
UF 124634, holotype right mandible of Rhizosmilodon fitae with canine and first molar, from the Whidden Creek Site, Polk Co., Florida. Above, lateral view; below, medial view.
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/species/rhizosmilodon-fiteae
