Should Fossils Be for Sale?

How did the 155-million-year-old dinosaur get to the mall? That might sound like the start of a joke, but it really happened. Since 2014, a Diplodocus skeleton has been on display in a shopping mall in Dubai, the biggest city in the United Arab Emirates, a country in Asia. The 80-foot-long fossil, found in Wyoming in 2008, ended up at the mall after being sold at an auction.

Dinosaur fossils are often sold at auctions, where whoever bids the most money wins. In October 2021, a collector paid $7.7 million for “Big John,” the largest Triceratops skeleton ever found. Last May, the remains of a Deinonychus nicknamed Hector sold for $12.4 million. And dinosaur eggs have fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

For some collectors, the chance to own a rare dinosaur fossil is worth the huge price tag. Many buyers display their prehistoric purchases in their offices or homes.

But some paleontologists say fossils should never be sold to private collectors. They argue that fossils belong in museums, where researchers can study them.

Should wealthy collectors be allowed to buy dinosaur fossils? Consider some pros and cons, then decide for yourself.

People who support the sale of fossils say that without fossil hunters, most rare dinosaur bones and skeletons would never be uncovered. Searching for and carefully excavating such fossils is expensive work that many museums and universities can’t afford to do on their own.

“I’m finding things that probably wouldn’t have been found any other way,” says Craig Pfister, owner of Great Plains Paleontology, a fossil-hunting company in Madison, Wisconsin. “If a fossil is never found and just erodes, everyone loses.”

Other fossil hunters point out that, according to U.S. law, fossils found on private property belong to whoever owns the land. If a landowner lets a company dig for fossils, why shouldn’t the company then be allowed to sell what it finds to profit itself and the landowner?

Plus, Pfister says, fossils sold to private buyers often end up in the hands of researchers anyway: “My experience is that most people donate them to museums.”

For example, soon after winning an auction in 2008 for a Triceratops specimen known as Cliff, the purchaser donated the skeleton to the Museum of Science in Boston, Massachusetts, where it’s still on display.

Many scientists, however, are opposed to fossils being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Some museums can raise enough money to buy fossils at auctions. But most simply can’t compete with wealthy private buyers.

For paleontologists, fossils are important because they’re the only direct evidence people have of prehistoric life on Earth. And the number of fossils available for research is limited.

“Fossils aren’t manufactured in a factory,” says Thomas Carr, a paleontologist at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. “They contain important information—actual evidence from lost worlds, a deep past.”

Also, visiting a museum is the only chance most people get to see dinosaur remains in person. But they can’t do that when fossils end up in private collectors’ homes.

Some people say the United States should follow the example of Alberta, Canada, which has some of the world’s strictest fossil-protection laws. There, only professional paleontologists are permitted to dig up fossils.

“Once we lose a fossil to a private collector, it’s like losing a part of our memory permanently,” says Carr. “It never comes back.”