Digs of Fossils on Public Lands Debated : Science: Valuable dinosaur bones are seized in federal raids. A law curbing collectors is proposed.

Peter Larson made headlines last May when FBI agents raided his private fossil museum here and seized not only his records but valuable dinosaur bones that he had taken from federal lands.

Among the confiscated fossils was “Sue,” one of the finest specimens of a Tyrannosaurus Rex ever found. Sue now resides in a boiler room at the South Dakota School of Mines.

“Big Al” was taken by federal officials to the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University in Bozeman. Big Al is a nearly complete fossilized skeleton of a huge, carnivorous allosaur dug up on unmarked U.S. land near Shell, Wyo., by Swiss fossil hunter Kirby Siber.

Larson and Siber are key figures in a highly charged dispute over a proposed federal law to restrict private fossil collectors such as themselves from digging on public lands.

Supporters of the bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Jake Garn (R-Utah), say the law is necessary to protect U.S. fossils from being plundered for profit.

“If we continue to allow these public resources to be sold to the highest bidder,” said Baucus when he introduced the bill in August, “we stand to lose crucial sources of scientific research and public education.”

Hobbyists and amateur fossil hunters fear they could be turned into criminals for picking up bones on the public lands of the West.

Professional fossil collectors maintain that the bill is special-interest legislation designed to guarantee a monopoly on the country’s vast paleontological resources for public and nonprofit museums and colleges.

“It could be bad for the science,” Siber told the National Geographic. “We need all the eyes we can get out in the field. The world of paleontology is too big to allow access to just a few.”

The differing views were exchanged at a recent “Fossils for the Future” conference in Rapid City.

“I strongly oppose commercial exploitation of our national heritage,” said Robert Reynolds of the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands, Calif. “Fossils are a finite resource. We’re losing clues, data, information. Public lands are a preserve, and collecting by permit is a system that works.”

But Larson, head of the private Black Hills Institute of Geology, argued: “Virtually every museum in the world has acquired fossils from private collectors. The issue here is freedom. People should be allowed to keep what they find. We have a huge army of people out there who could do what would cost millions to do under this bill. Let’s not make them into criminals.”

Robert J. Emry of the Smithsonian Institution’s paleobiology department opposed what he called the bill’s “regional exclusivity” provision, which he said would hinder fossils discovered in one state from being displayed in another.

“More people enjoy and see Nebraska fossils at the Smithsonian than would see the fossils in Nebraska,” he said.

Gregg Bourland, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux, told the conference that, in the wake of last spring’s FBI raids, “we will issue invitations to respectable scientists, but never to commercial collectors. It’s not the money, it’s the philosophy. We might have the biggest T-Rex in the world, but it will never be sold in Japan.”

Premium fossil prices are an undercurrent in this debate. A Museum of the Rockies staff member refers to dinosaur bones on public lands as “the last great gold rush.” Good specimens bring big money.

Siber’s team began excavating in 1990 on private land. In 1991, their jubilation at finding Big Al turned to dismay when the nearby land where they were digging turned out to be public. They were evicted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Siber complains that the staff of the Montana museum refuses either to acknowledge his role in Big Al’s discovery or to give him a plaster-cast copy of the skull to take back for his exhibits in Aathal, Switzerland. “They are using me unfairly as an example of why fossil collecting needs regulating,” he said.

“I think that when the site is written up and when the story of Big Al is told, there will never be any doubt that Mr. Siber will be credited as the discoverer,” said Arthur H. Wolf, the museum director. The BLM, not the museum, controls distribution of the fossil’s plaster casts, he said.

In South Dakota, a federal prosecutor charges that the Cheyenne River land on which Peter Larson found Sue was under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and that the fossil was taken without a proper permit. Larson has sued the government to get back his Tyrannosaurus Rex.