WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF RELIABLE PALEONTOLOGICAL RESOURCES? COMMERCIAL EXPLOITATION, SCIENTIFIC PRESERVES, RECREATIONAL RESOURCES, OR ...???

Controversy continues over the buying and selling of fossils, most notably large “one-of-a-kind” specimens of likely scientific importance. How can research institutions and paleontological museums raise funds to compete with wealthy collectors with little or no interest in science? Or should they?

But smaller, less noteworthy fossils abound, are increasingly finding their ways into rock and fossil sales venues, and markets for these materials drive quarrying and collection of fossils in many places in the world. Should there be efforts to conserve or otherwise restrict haphazard extraction from such sites, or are the “general interest” and/or “educational” benefits of such extraction more important to paleontological research in the long run. And to what extent is it appropriate that commerce be the primary driving motive for such quarrying.

Issues of government regulation, private land rights, intellectual ownership, etc. will be discussed, with particular reference to Paleozoic invertebrates from certain reservoir spillways in Iowa and Indiana, Triassic petrified wood from various federal lands in the southwestern U.S., materials in obvious immediate threat of destruction by wave action along various sea-cliff exposures, and extensive labor-intensive trenching and quarrying in the deserts of southern Morocco.

Is “salvage paleontology” a viable approach? How much individual decision-making should be permitted to governmental resource managers? How can scientific interests be protected while living in a “free-enterprise” global market for fossil materials? Is governmental regulation an appropriate activity in such matters? To what extent are scientists in general - and paleontologists in particular - even aware of the scale of such activities?