Officer Wages Uphill Battle With Fossil Thieves

Sheriff’s Det. Steve Rogers’ beat consists of hundreds of miles of remote, frozen terrain.

From his patrol plane high above it’s hard to spot any danger to him, let alone the public.

But Rogers has received death threats at his unlisted home telephone number and has seen a “wanted” poster of himself, offering $40,000 for his capture. One day, he found his two house cats on the front porch, their necks broken.

“I guess I’m too dumb to be scared off,” Rogers said.

This isn’t the dirty work of drug dealers or mob goons. On Rogers’ beat, it’s fossil thieves.

Hidden by the vastness of the West, thieves plunder the ground of fossils valued by scientists for their portraits of prehistoric times. Police say fossils are sold worldwide on a burgeoning black market. Commercial fossil dealers contend police exaggerate the problem and argue more public land should be open for digging.

Since the 1980s, commercial and scientific groups have clashed over how to manage fossils on public land. Moves in Congress to open up the land to commercial interests have stalled, as have efforts by scientists to protect fossils more extensively.

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As a pilot and investigator for the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department, Rogers flies over an arid expanse of small towns and brush-dotted plains where, 50 million years ago, tropical and subtropical plants and animals thrived along two freshwater lakes.

If he sees suspects below, Rogers contacts officers in four-wheel drives for assistance. Rogers flies over the area whenever he can, between several times a week and once a month, depending on weather and tips from informants.

When he is on the ground, he does a little bit of everything, including handling drug cases and car thefts.

The Green River Formation, as Rogers’ beat is known, draws worldwide interest from scientists and commercial dealers because of its abundant, well-preserved marine specimens.

Flying the plane over the scrubland, Rogers noted five or six areas of freshly overturned earth from fossil stealing. A herd of wild horses galloped away, spooked by the hum of the engine.

Rogers sees a faint cloud of dust and veers over for a better look, lifting the plane higher so that he does not get within range of someone’s cross hairs. But nothing is there. It may have only been a group of pronghorn antelope.

Rogers banks the plane low over an area known to law enforcement as “the turtles” because of its turtle fossils. The turtles, he said, “is a known high-crime area.”

Before fossil crimes, the department plane was used mostly to check for forest fires and the occasional cattle rustlers.

Rogers has been chasing fossil thieves since he noticed suspicious holes in the ground nine years ago. His observations led to the formation of a multi-agency task force called “Operation Rock Fish” in 1993.

The group, named after the most common fossil found in Wyoming, has netted several hundred suspects, although Rogers said arrest numbers are unavailable because the various agencies in the task force have not coordinated them.

The best way to crack down on fossil stealing is to catch thieves red-handed, but that’s difficult in the West. The average amount of land patrolled by a ranger for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Wyoming is 3 million acres.

“Most of these criminals, if they see a vehicle coming, they’re going to stop doing what they were doing,” said Bill Vernon, chief ranger for the Bureau of Land Management in Wyoming, who has participated in Operation Rock Fish. “It’s often hard to sneak up on them.”

Over the years, Rogers has learned about paleontology, geology and how to spot fossils that are specific to his region.

The most serious thieves also do their homework, by researching student paleontology papers at local universities before venturing out, he said.

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Fossil sales are booming over the Internet, in rock shops and in art galleries. Prices range from $5 to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on rarity and intricacy.

Top-dollar fossils depict perfectly preserved skeletons, feathers and even the skin markings of animals. Typically they are displayed on rock slabs or inlaid in counter-top and floor tiles as home decor.

As fossil sales flourish, crime follows.

Worldwide, the theft of fossils is gaining momentum, often involving rings of five or six people, said Angela Meadows, program manager of cultural property for Interpol in Washington, D.C.

The countries with the biggest fossil theft problems are Russia, China, Australia and the United States, she said.

Many fossils are not worth enough for police to pursue, no matter how priceless they are to science.

“It just isn’t something a lot of governments have focused on, and probably because the fossils have low monetary value,” Meadows said. “You can buy a mammoth tusk for $2,000, depending on the condition.”

Foreign law enforcement is not particularly interested in tracking down Wyoming fossils smuggled overseas. Rogers has to persuade foreign police agencies that the smugglers may be moving other contraband, such as guns and drugs.

Marion Zenker, a commercial fossil dealer for the Black Hills Institute, questions police claims about the extent of fossil smuggling.

“We’re one of the largest earth science supply houses in the world,” she said. “If there were a huge black market out there, we would know about it.”

Paleontologists complain that laws against fossil theft have lagged behind the times. Unlike Civil War cannons or other cultural artifacts, the theft of fossils from public land falls under a statute that penalizes the theft of government property.

There is no maximum punishment because the penalty hinges on a fossil’s value.

Scientists say most fossil thieves get no more than a slap on the wrist.

Zenker says commercial digging should be allowed on public land because many fossils are lost to the wind and elements and, because of the vastness of the West, scientists cannot discover them all.

Federal land is off-limits to commercial digging. On state land, commercial digging is allowed but valuable fossils must be given to the state.

Improper digging takes a toll on the fragile environment. Paleontologists dig up fossils carefully from the strata, studying under what conditions the animals lived and died. Fossil thieves tend to hack at the strata with screwdrivers, shovels or whatever tools are handy, tossing aside the less valuable fossils.

“It’s unbelievable. They are throwing away more fossils than they are taking,” Rogers said.