What The Private Sale Of Fossils Means For Paleontology

KATHLEEN DAVIS: This is Science Friday. I’m Kathleen Davis.

$44 million, that’s the price to pay if you want to be the proud owner of the most complete stegosaurus fossil to date. On July 17, Apex the stegosaurus was sold at Sotheby’s in New York City for a record $44.6 million. The buyer was millionaire Ken Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel. But don’t worry, he won’t keep it in his living room. According to him, he plans to loan the fossil to American institutions for display.

The sale of dinosaur fossils has become more and more profitable in recent years. 8 out of the 10 most expensive fossils have been sold in the last four years, but some paleontologists aren’t too happy about this. Within the industry, the privatization and sale of dinosaur fossils can be a cause for concern. Paleontologists fear that as more and more fossils become privately owned, their availability of research specimens might decrease.

Here to tell us more about the potential scientific impacts of privatizing and selling fossils is my guest, Dr. Steve Brusatte, a professor of paleontology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Steve, welcome back to Science Friday.

STEVE BRUSATTE: Always a pleasure, Kathleen, To talk dinosaurs with you guys on Science Friday.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: Yeah, likewise. So let’s start with this specific specimen that was just sold. What makes Apex so special?

STEVE BRUSATTE: It is a really important dinosaur fossil. This is a skeleton of a stegosaurus. Stegosaurus is one of those iconic dinosaurs. It’s the ones with the plates on its back, the spikes on its tail, the tiny little brain in its head. It’s on that roster of dinosaurs with T. rex, with triceratops, with brontosaurus that we all learn as young kids.

So it’s an icon as a dinosaur, and this appendicular skeleton is really well preserved. Almost all the bones are there. And, believe it or not, stegosaurus, although it’s a very famous dinosaur, it’s not actually known from a whole lot of fossil skeletons. So it’s famous but rare, and this fossil really is a crown-jewel type of skeleton.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: So how has this sale of fossils evolved over time? I mean, is this kind of a newer concept, or is this something that’s been going on for a while?

STEVE BRUSATTE: It’s a little bit of both. So, of course, people have been finding/encountering fossils since time immemorial. It’s only been in the last couple of hundred years or so that museums, especially in the Western world and universities, have studied these fossils, put these fossils on display, and that modern scientists have realized that these bones belong to extinct giant reptiles and other animals. So that’s a relatively new concept.

And really, ever since museums have started to display fossils, fossils have been bought and sold, and museums have paid people to go out looking for fossils. Many of the great museum collections around the world, whether it’s the American Museum of Natural History in New York– which is where I did my graduate work– whether it’s the Natural History Museum in London– which is the big museum in Britain where I’m based now. So many of these collections were built by either buying fossils from collectors or paying collectors to go out and find fossils. So that’s not new.

But what’s new over, really, the past 10 or 20 years is that really good, really complete dinosaur skeletons are often going up for auction on the global marketplace to the highest bidder, and that bidder usually is not going to be a museum or a university, and the prices are getting really, really, really high. I think my jaw is permanently dislocated from the time when I woke up and I read that this fossil had gone for almost $45 million. Price tags like that, these astronomical price tags, that’s what’s new right now.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: I mean, what usually happens when a fossil is purchased by a private bidder? I mean, is it possible that it just sits in somebody’s living room? I mean, what tends to happen, as far as we know?

STEVE BRUSATTE: Every situation is different. And sometimes a fossil is purchased by a private individual, and that person turns around right away and donates it to a museum. And that fossil therefore is conserved, and it can be put on display. It can be studied by scientists.

Other times at the other end of the spectrum, a fossil might be bought by an anonymous bidder, and that’s it. You don’t know. Where is it? Where has it gone? You never hear from it again. And as far as you know, it could be in the basement of an oligarch. It could be on somebody’s yacht. It could be sitting in a bank vault waiting to appreciate in value to be put up for auction again, but you just don’t know.

And those are the situations that really worry us as paleontologists when there is a spectacular, beautiful, scientifically important fossil of a dinosaur or any other type of fossil that is basically there one day and then, for all purposes, is gone the next because if somebody buys it and you don’t know who that person is and you don’t know where that fossil has gone, that fossil has essentially disappeared.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: Yeah, I mean, what kind of impact does that ultimately have on science and research?

STEVE BRUSATTE: If all fossils were put up for auction, there really would be very little science anymore, frankly, because as we all know, especially in this day and age, a day of tight budgets, budget cuts, inflation, and so on, museums/universities do not have the resources to outbid very wealthy individuals at auction. And so if all fossils were put up for auction, there would be probably nothing left for science.

Of course, that’s an extreme scenario, and that’s not the case. The case that’s happening now is that some of the very best fossils, the most complete fossils, and, in some cases, the most scientifically important fossils of dinosaurs are starting to find their way to the auction block more than to museums.

So our worry as paleontologists who study dinosaurs is that this trend continues and that it becomes ever harder for museums and universities and scientists to have access to fossils to study and to put on display for the public because it’s not just about us. It’s not just about me having the fossil bones to study for my career as a paleontologist. It’s about putting these on display so they can inspire people. They can inspire families, inspire children. That’s how I got into paleontology, going to museums, reveling in those dinosaur exhibits. And that is really the single biggest thing that we do not want to disappear, that dinosaurs no longer can inspire people if they’re not finding their ways into museums.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: So it’s my understanding that when you go to your local natural-history museum, if you see a dinosaur skeleton, there’s a good chance that at least part of that skeleton is made up of casts. It’s not the original bones, necessarily, on display. If you have a situation where there is a pretty complete fossil that’s being sold to a private collector which is original bones, I mean, what’s kind of the scientific importance of having those original bones to study versus having the casts later?

STEVE BRUSATTE: It’s kind of like if, say, I was an art historian, I would want to see the real Mona Lisa. It’s not the same to just have a JPEG of it on my computer screen to look at. OK, I could look at it. I could learn a bit from it, but you need to see the real thing as a scholar, as a scientist.

I would also argue that for the public as well, going to a museum, seeing a dinosaur skeleton, seeing the real deal is so much better than seeing a cast copy. And it’s true that a lot of dinosaur skeletons on display at museums are partially cast copies just because we’re talking about things that are tens, hundreds of millions of years old, and it’s very hard to preserve every single bone in the skeleton as a fossil. So, of course, most museum exhibits are going to have a few bits and pieces that might not be genuine.

But the point really is that, in this case, this is a 150 million year old dinosaur. These bones contain a whole wealth of information, and it’s not just the size and the shape of the bones that we’re interested in as scientists. The bones themselves contain an archive of information. There are still original chemical material in these bones that can tell us about the body temperatures, the physiology, the metabolism of these dinosaurs. There’s information inside the bones, growth rings that are laid down once a year, just like in a tree trunk. If you take really microscopic views of those bones or you CAT scan those bones to a high degree of detail, you can count those growth rings. You can look at the bone texture. You can understand how these dinosaurs grew, how long they lived their lives, how quickly they matured. So there’s all kinds of information you can only get from the actual real bones.

And really what I’m saying here is that it’s not a good situation if, oh, OK, we’ll let the wealthiest people in the world own the actual bones, and then they just put a copy on display in a museum somewhere or archive a copy in the storehouse of a museum. That does not give us, as scientists, all the information we can get from the bones. And I really, really don’t think going to a museum as a young kid, as a family, standing underneath a skeleton that’s just some kind of 3D-printed model of some dinosaur bones that the real ones are in some rich guy’s vault, I don’t think that’s the same scenario at all.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: So what do you hope for the final outcome of Apex? I mean, ideally, where would you like to see this skeleton?

STEVE BRUSATTE: Well, I hope it goes to a museum, and that’s really what it comes down to for this skeleton to, number one, be conserved so we can be sure that it’s going to be kept safe. These are 150 million year old bones. They degrade over time. They need conservators to keep them safe. You need a museum for that.

In order for a skeleton like this to be able to be studied scientifically, to be available to scientists around the world, to come and see and to study, it needs to be in a museum. And in order to inspire the public, to be put on display so that people from all walks of life can look at it and marvel at it, it needs to be in a museum. So I greatly hope that this fossil goes to a museum.

And that’s a pretty normal thing. Let’s face it. Think of all the art museums in the world, all the universities in the world that have the names of donors on the wings of the museum, on the museum walls. It’s a normal thing to donate things like this to a museum. There can be quite generous tax implications, from what I understand.

So it’s not an unusual thing, and I hope that’s what happens here. I hope that the man who’s bought it donates to a museum. He says– and he’s right about this– stegosaurus is an American dinosaur. It is only known from the United States. It’s an iconic dinosaur. It’s been known since the 1900s. It cuts a profile with those plates on his back that everybody recognizes. This quintessentially American dinosaur, it should be on display in an American museum so that people here can learn about the natural history of our country. So I hope that he does what he says he’s going to do and that we see this fossil in a museum soon.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: Do situations like this where you have a lot of private money going towards the actual purchasing of fossils, does that ultimately have trickle-down effects for private funding on paleontology, for work that’s being done by university employees, for example?

STEVE BRUSATTE: I’ve never seen any trickle-down effect of a big mega sale of a dinosaur going for millions of dollars at auction. That money is going to whoever’s selling the fossil and to the auction house. That money is not at all going to the scientists.

And the thing is that with the dinosaur like Apex selling for about $45 million, I mean, I can’t even fathom to think if I had $45 million, I could probably support teams of hundreds of people digging up dinosaurs all summer long for many decades. The number of dinosaurs that a paleontologist at a museum or a university research program could go out and find if they had that kind of money in their budget is just huge.

So that’s another thing I just hope that maybe, if we’re going to continue this trend where some of the best dinosaur skeletons are put up on the auction block, that maybe there’s some kind of cultural shift where the people that are buying these fossils recognize that they do have such value for science and for education that they also start to support the universities and the museums doing that work as kind of maybe an unofficial part of the deal of being able to be in that privileged position of buying such an important dinosaur fossil on the auction block.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: And this specific stegosaurus skeleton was found by a private paleontologist. Is there a schism in the paleontological community between these private paleontology digs and public paleontology?

STEVE BRUSATTE: I think it depends on who you ask. Some people would probably say there’s a big schism. Others would say, no, we can all get along. I think it’s a bit like how we think about politics. It’s almost become a bit political there.

And there are certainly some strong voices that advocate that there should be no commercial collecting, that fossils should never be bought and sold. But I think most paleontologists, especially here in America, just understand when you have your own land and you find something on your land, you can do what you want with it. That’s an integral part of our culture and our history, and that’s not going to change. Some people might want that to change. It’s just not going to change. That is our country and our culture.

So I think most paleontologists have a more pragmatic approach. I think most of us– and I’m included here. We got into this field because we were enthralled as kids by fossils, by dinosaurs, by going to museums and seeing them on display but also going out and collecting our own fossils, making our own fossil collections, having that shelf in our bedroom with the bits of dinosaur bones and the fossil seashells and corals. And I wouldn’t want to change that. I wouldn’t want to make that illegal, to stop people from collecting their own fossils.

The real issue here is these very rare, very unusual, very scientifically important, one of a kind dinosaur skeletons like Apex becoming commodities, and it’s getting worse and worse in the sense that the price tags are getting higher and higher. They’re fetching so much more money at auction year by year. And if that trend continues, then there really might be a proper schism between the academic and the commercial side of things in paleontology because we could find ourselves in a situation where fossils simply are commodities to be bought and sold by the highest bidder on the international market.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: I’m not quite in the tax bracket where I will ever be able to purchase a $45-million–

STEVE BRUSATTE: Yeah, me neither. Me neither.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: –dinosaur skeleton. Yeah, I was going to say, I figure a vast majority of people will never be able to afford to do that. I mean, to play devil’s advocate here, is it really such a problem for this to happen a few times? Is the concern more about it setting a bad precedent?

STEVE BRUSATTE: Oh, it’s definitely the precedent that’s my biggest worry. Look, if this happened once or twice and these were kind of one-off things, yeah, there might be a bit of fire and fury about it, but it wouldn’t be an enormous problem. The issue is that we are seeing a trend here. And over the past few decades, there have been more and more fossils going up for auction, and the prices are getting ever higher.

And just a few years ago, a T. rex skeleton went for a little bit over $30 million, and that shocked us. I mean, as a paleontology community, we were taken aback by that. Oh my goodness, a fossil going for $30 million. Now just a few years later, $45 million.

Now I know, look, it’s a time of inflation. [LAUGHS] So prices are going up, but that’s a big jump. And so we’re seeing more auctions. We’re seeing higher prices for fossils. And what I hope is that this is just a bit of a trend in the world of high-value collecting.

And if that’s the case, then we’re probably OK, and I really, really, really hope that things settle down a bit and that I’m not back on the program three or four years from now talking about, oh my God, a dinosaur has now gone for $100 million. It set a new record. That, to me, is the nightmare scenario.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: Well, let’s cross our fingers, Steve.

That is all the time that we have for now. I would like to thank my guest, Dr. Steve Brusatte, a professor of paleontology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Steve, thanks so much for joining us.

STEVE BRUSATTE: Pleasure, as always. Thanks.

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