US Paleontologists Call For a Worldwide Halt To the Sale of Vertebrate Dinosaur Fossils

Leading US paleontologists are calling for a worldwide halt to the sale of vertebrate dinosaur fossils. The booming market for specimens, driven by their popularity with wealthy private collectors, including Hollywood stars, is pushing up prices and putting them out of reach of museums and scientists, they say. From a report: While the art market is organized around brand-name artists, dinosaur sales are all about celebrity species, with a tyrannosaurus rex skeleton fetching up to $10m, although the velociraptor is the most prized. The price tag for a triceratops's skull is $170,000 to $400,000, and a diplodocus is $570,000 to $1.1m. Last year a complete egg of an aepyornis maximus, otherwise known as an elephant bird, sold for $130,000 -- roughly five times what it would have gone for a decade earlier.

Last year the US Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology (SVP) called on the Parisian auction house Aguttes to cancel a sale inside the Eiffel tower that contained just one lot: a 29-foot-long dinosaur of a yet-to-be identified species. The winning bidder paid $2.3m for the piece. Executive members of the society drew attention to the claim that the winning bidder could name the species, calling that assertion 'misleading because the naming of new species is governed by the rules of the International Code of Nomenclature.' 'The sale of all fossils is inappropriate,' says Catherine Badgley, former president of the SVP, which represents more than 2,200 international palaeontologists. 'Many, particularly vertebrate fossils, are rarely common, and it's certainly not the case for dinosaurs. The commodification is in principle inappropriate because it motivates unscrupulous people.'

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