Hello! Have you been eyeballing a fossil somewhere on ebay? As a paleontologist, please let me offer a few comments concerning the legality and ethics of buying fossils. The following apply to fossils of any kind of organism, but are particularly applicable to fossils of vertebrates.
(1) Please seriously consider the legality of such a purchase. In the U.S., it is legal to collect fossils of invertebrates (things that don’t have backbones — these would include shells of clams, snails, ammonites, as well as insects and the like) and plants on public land, and there are no laws against selling them. (Many fossils on ebay do not come from the U.S., of course; laws vary from country to country, but these kinds of items are legal in most countries. In China and Argentina, however, no fossils may be collected legally without a permit, and none may leave those countries legally!) Fossils of vertebrates (things that have backbones — fish, amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, mammals, birds, as well as tracks/footprints and eggs made by those animals) may not be collected from public land without a permit, and permits are only granted to accredited institutions (universities and museums, never to unaffiliated individuals). Fossils collected on private land may be sold by the rightful owner of the land, but many fossils claim to have been collected on private land that were, in fact, found on public land.
EXAMPLES OF LEGAL FOSSILS (in the U.S.)
Ammonite (shell) Leaf Insect
EXAMPLES OF FOSSILS THAT ARE ILLEGAL IF FOUND ON PUBLIC LAND (in the U.S.)
Teeth (mammoth, here) Bone (dinosaur, here) Shell (turtle, here)
There is no good way, unfortunately, to determine from an ebay listing what has and has not been collected legally, so I recommend contacting the seller and asking for documentation or other proof that it was collected legally. If the seller is evasive, odds are good the item was collected illegally, and you would be buying a stolen object. However, often a seller will provide (or offer to provide) documentation stating that a fossil is legal. Beware! There have been many instances in which these documents turn out to have been forged, especially (but not exclusively) for items from outside the U.S. After obtaining any such documentation, I highly recommend making an inquiry to the organization that is listed as the source of the documentation (usually a government agency) and checking on the validity of the documents.
As above, if the source of the item is China or Argentina, it is illegal, plain and simple, even if the seller is not in the U.S. — the governments of neither country have ever allowed fossils out of their borders legally (in China, the single exception of which I am aware is fossils of the fish Lycoptera, which are so common that they are sold with government authority). The very common dinosaur eggs listed as coming from China are all illegal. If the fossil is from another country, you should consider checking into the laws of those countries — a search-engine inquiry for key words such as “fossil,” “law,” and the name of the country in question will likely lead you to answers. I should note that the U.S. has no laws preventing the import of such things for sale in the U.S. (I don’t know about Europe or elsewhere), so your decision to buy such a thing becomes a question of ethics (see (2), below), not laws, although it remains possible that, if the government of the source country requests it of the U.S., all such specimens could be seized and returned to their rightful homes.
(2) Please seriously consider the ethics of such a purchase. Many fossils are of very rare, scientifically important organisms that could have important implications for understanding the history of life on Earth and evolution. Similarly, some fossils are quite common, so their sale (if legal) is not a blow to science at all. As before, without some background knowledge, there is almost no way of knowing from an ebay listing whether or not a fossil fits this criterion, although if the seller is asking a lot of money for an item, that is often (but not always) an indication of its rarity and potential importance. Rarity and scientific value are more likely to be issues to be considered with vertebrates than invertebrates, since the latter are much more common as fossils overall; there are, however, exceptions even to that rule: extremely old invertebrates (most famously soft-bodied fossils from the Burgess Shale and Chengjiang faunas of Canada and China, respectively; also Ediacaran organisms from many places around the world) may also be very important. The best recourse, in such situations, would be to contact a professional paleontologist at a nearby museum or university — they will generally have a good feel for an item’s rarity and scientific value. (Some are adamantly opposed to the sale of fossils of any kind and might refuse to be involved, so you may need to contact more than one.) You can even give them a link to the item’s listing so they can see what information is and is not provided about the fossil to help them make a determination. Who knows…the specimen may be something completely new to science; if placed in a public repository (museum or university), someone might even name it after you!
(3) Please be aware that many fossils are partial or complete forgeries! Now, before continuing, please understand that reconstructions are (usually) something different than forgeries — the two words are not synonyms! It is uncommon to find fossils 100% intact (for vertebrates in particular, it is quite rare) — often, parts of a fossil (particularly true of bones) are missing, having either weathered away or broken off either before becoming a fossil or after it was exposed to the elements as a fossil but before discovered by human eyes. Sometimes the missing portions do not have critical features on them; sometimes they do. It is common to reconstruct any missing portions, often using plaster, water putty, or epoxy putty. This not only increases the aesthetic value of the fossil, but can help stabilize it so that the fossil is stronger and more durable. Reconstructions done by someone who understands the anatomy of the fossil organism, and has dealt with many individuals of the same kind of organism, are generally anatomically accurate, rather than sloppy guesswork. Sometimes, (again especially with vertebrates), elements from both sides are not recovered — only one arm, for example. Organisms are largely symmetrical, so if one arm is known, the other can be sculpted as a mirror image — many mounts of skeletons in a museum utilize this principle to make “complete” mounts out of incomplete specimens because complete skeletons are quite rare. Reconstructed portions of fossils are commonly painted to try and match the real portions of the fossil, but with some practice, it will become easy to pick out which portions are real and which are not — textures and the way light reflects off of reconstructed parts are generally slightly different than the actual fossil. This is normal — no intention to deceive you, the buyer, is generally intended…in fact, especially honest dealers will be happy to point out which parts are reconstructed. In some listings, you may see a percentage of reconstruction stated — such things are difficult to calculate consistently, so view these as estimates at best, and there are some ways to make the numbers appear particularly small when, in fact, the amount of reconstruction is higher.
Forgeries differ from reconstructions because they typically are intended to deceive the buyer into thinking something that is fake is actually genuine — typically, they are intended to make very poor fossils (if there is any fossil material present at all!) appear very complete in order to increase their prices. Forgeries come in many degrees:
specimens that are entirely fake (sculpted) but passed off as genuine;
specimens that contain very little real material (a very fragmentary fossil) but has large portions of it sculpted to make it appear complete;
specimens that are actually one kind of organism but are augmented with faked parts and/or have parts carved off to make it appear like a different kind of organism; and
specimens that are composites — assembled from parts of different individuals (and, sometimes, entirely different organisms!) to make one “complete” (and artificial) organism.
The key — what makes forgeries different from reconstructions — is that they are passed off as real when they are not. Reconstructions are not intended to fool anyone, although in museum settings, many people don’t take the time to inquire or investigate what is and isn’t real in an exhibit.
Forgeries can be manufactured from fossils of any organism from any time period and any locality, but they have been particularly common among fossils from Liaoning, Hebei, and Nei Mongol (Inner Mongolia) provinces in China (from the Jiulongshan, Daohugou, Dabeigou, Dadianzi, Yixian and Jiufotang formations — the latter two combined are called the Jehol Group — which are of either Middle Jurassic or Early Cretaceous age, though both are often listed as Late Jurassic) and, among those, the fossil birds and dinosaurs are commonly forged. Forgery is also known among fossils from Morocco, particularly the trilobites.
Why such things are largely or entirely forged depends on who made them. Often, the same people that dug up fragmentary fossils are the same ones who forge missing parts or whole fossils; sometimes it is the dealers who buy them very cheaply who forge them in order to resell them at much higher prices — either way, the intention is usually to fool the buyer into thinking they are getting something rare and wonderful. In China, these specimens have been forged not to try and mislead scientists or buyers, but to fool the resalers: the usually poor farmers that dig them up (illegally, under Chinese law) do so to make a little extra money on the black market; the intermediary buyers to whom they sell pay more for complete fossils than partial ones, so the farmers have become expert at carving and sculpting partial or entire forgeries, or combining fossils so that the pieces fit together neatly, creating an artificial, “whole” fossil. (In rare cases, bones of modern organisms are cleverly stained and incorporated into fake “stone” and incorporated into such fossils, too!) The farmers are generally unaware of the prices these fossils (real or fake) sell for in the West, but the intermediary buyers and sellers do, so prices are often jacked up orders of magnitude beyond what was given the farmer in the first place — in short, it’s the middlemen making all the money. I cannot say whether or not the intermediary buyers & sellers necessarily know if a fossil is fake or not…but in all probability, they don’t care: they’re just after the money, and caveat emptor for you, the buyer.
As before, there’s generally no way to know from an ebay listing whether or not a fossil is fake — in some cases, the forgeries are so good that even firsthand examination by a trained paleontologist cannot reveal this (and techniques such as using a CT scanner are the only way to reveal the truth — for an interesting story about one such case, of a fossil called “Archaeoraptor,” I recommend:
the October, 2000 issue of National Geographic (U.S. edition), which has an expose on the specimen;
the Wikipedia entry for the history and some discussion of the specimen; and
the web page of the CT scan lab at the University of Texas at Austin (under “Publications,” in the 2001 section) for how the forgery was ultimately discovered (this is a somewhat more technical discussion).
Key signs that can (but don’t always) indicate forgery are:
If any part of the fossil (commonly an arm, hand, leg, or foot) is a mirror-image of its counterpart on the opposite side of the body. With the fossil birds in particular, often a “single” specimen is made from the part and counterpart of a single real specimen — many of these fossils are discovered split down the middle between two slabs of rock. If the specimen was found without, for example, its left leg, then the half of the right leg on the opposing slab of rock can be carved off and glued to the other slab to make it look like the specimen was found with both legs. Because people have begun to catch on to this, it is becoming a less common practice.
Check the posture — if the fossil is splayed out in such a way that every single bone is visible and not covered by another bone or otherwise disturbed, it may be a forgery since conditions necessary to preserve a fossil this way are rare (but not impossible — it does happen).
For many of the Chinese fossils, also examine cracks in the specimen: the shales in which many of the fossils are found are very fragile and break easily when discovered, so often the real things have to be reassembled from pieces. Some fakes lack such cracks running through the specimen — this may indicate that an unbroken piece of rock has been carved and painted to resemble bone to the unwary buyer. However, as before, this is not a guarantee — some fossils that were discovered via very careful excavation may also lack cracks! Also, composites will also have cracks, but still be forgeries.
Below, the picture on the left is a fake fossil bird — the posture is “too” good, and there are few, if any, cracks running through the specimen — some cracks (such as the one near the head) stop around the specimen and pick up again later! The one on the right is genuine (and in a museum) — note the greater detail in the bones preserved (in this case, the impressions where the fragile bones once were), and there are cracks running through the specimen — not much disturbing has occurred with this specimen, though, so it’s posture is great and genuine — no single feature alone is a universal signal of forgery!
Another course of action is to peruse the web for pictures of other fossils from the same area and time as one you are considering bidding on. While it is not terribly unusual for fossils from the same area to have some differences in how they are preserved (e.g., different shades of color in the rock and/or fossil), radical changes can indicate a forgery. For example, below are two pictures of “bird fossils” from China. The ones on the left are genuine — the fossils from this area tend to be dark brown or black and the rock in which they are preserved gray-ish, often with brownish stains. The one on the right has white bone and red rock — this is a specimen made of modern bird bones and other material carved to vaguely resemble the real thing, but the color difference is a dead giveaway.
As before, you may wish to consider contacting a paleontologist about a listed fossil…sometimes the forgeries are poor enough that the nature of a specimen can be determined even from ebay pictures. This isn’t a guarantee, however, as the “Archaeoraptor” debacle mentioned above indicates. In general, though, if it looks fake or too good to be true, odds are high that it is fake…but some genuine fossils really are too good to be true, and if prepared properly, can be quite exquisite.
(4) Check and see if a replica of the fossil is available. Replicas (casts) of fossils are virtually never illegal and can be bought and sold without worrying about laws or ethics in most instances. A cast is made by applying liquid rubber (latex, silicone, etc.) to a real fossil, letting it set, and peeling it carefully off, creating a “negative” image (a mold) of the original. The cast is made by pouring some material (plaster, but more often, these days, polyester and polyurethane resins) into the mold and letting it set, creating an exact duplicate of the original, which is often painted to resemble the original as well. A cast has several distinct advantages over a real fossil:
they are lighter, stronger, and less fragile than the fossils themselves;
they can typically be handled much more easily than real fossils, too, and so are better for educational and “showing-off” purposes;
they typically have all the same details as the original fossil (depending on how the mold was made from which the cast was generated) and thus are just as impressive to look at as the real fossil;
they are generally much less expensive than the real thing.
For some fossils (e.g., the first bird, Archaeopteryx), replicas are all anyone can get a hold of, since the real fossils are very rare and all held in museums. Often, more detailed casts (using higher quality molding and casting materials) will be more expensive. For other fossils, however, replicas may be harder to find — you may have to surf away from ebay to find a source. However, to save money and preserve actual fossils for science and education, while still obtaining something exciting and fascinating, this surfing may well be worth your while!
This guide is not intended to dissuade you from being interested in fossils or wanting to learn more about ancient life — it is only intended to familiarize you with the laws and ethics of fossils to help you carefully select legal and ethical things to purchase to protect yourself, your money, and the fossils themselves, so that everyone, yourself included, can get the maximum enjoyment and education from these wonderful artefacts!
I hope these guidelines are helpful to you! — dinogami
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