Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Can Dinosaurs Save the West?
Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Private collectors have severely damaged the world or archaeology in recent years by hording finds for themselves, with little regard to where items came from. See: Iraq. Is the same thing now happening to paleontology:

Ranchers and farmers are turning to a lucrative new crop. Wielding pickaxes, backhoes and duct tape, they are unearthing the remains of Triceratops, Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus rexes and selling the skeletons to museums and private collectors. One rancher sells T. rex teeth on eBay
Helping drive the big dig is the soaring price of prehistoric fossils. The going rate for a Triceratops skull is $250,000, up from $25,000 a decade ago, and a full T. rex skeleton with all its teeth can fetch anywhere from $1 million to $8 million. Serious fossil enthusiasts include actor Nicolas Cage and Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's former chief technology officer. Interior designers are incorporating fossil fish and fossil palm fronds as décor. And in Europe, art collectors who formerly fell for Damien Hirst's pickled animals are circling natural-history auctions, looking to buy dusty bones as sculptures.

Larry Tuss, a lifelong farmer who manages 6,000 acres near Winifred, Mont., close to the center of the state, plans to quit planting wheat and barley and focus more on his backyard expeditions. In the past six years, Mr. Tuss has found five dinosaurs on his property -- including a Triceratops-like Certopian, a duck-billed Hadrasaur and two long-necked sea lizards called Plesiosaurs. All are being readied for sale by a fossil company. "Ranching isn't cutting it anymore," he says. "I'm into fossil farming now."

Labels: Biblical Archaeology

Posted by B Feiler at 6:33 AM
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