General Discussion

This comes up in my own field because it's illegal to export fossils out of the country that weren't collected before some point in the 1940's. But illegally shipped fossils still show up in rock shops and, from time to time, museum collections outside of South America.

One case in particular comes to mind. A group of European and American paleontologists described what they thought might be a very primitive kind of snake with all four limbs. We already knew of snakes with hindlimbs - Haasiophis and Pachyophis from Israel come to mind - but all four? This was new. It was from Brazil.

There were all kinds of ethical issues with the study. The specimen was in a private collection on loan to a museum, for example. That's generally a no-no; if a specimen doesn't have a catalog number from a recognized public-trust institution, journals typically won't consider manuscripts including them for peer review. No one was willing to explain how the specimen got from Brazil to Germany. Worse, the paper was written without the input of any Brazilian scientists - and there are several Brazilian experts on snake evolution and fossil reptiles.

And because of the way it was acquired, information was lost. We didn't know where, exactly, it was from - we could tell it came from a particular region in Brazil known for fossils, but without knowing the precise locality, our understanding of its precise age and paleoenvironment are limited.

That the specimen later proved to be a different kind of reptile distantly related to lizards, and not a snake at all, added to the confusion. And when that was revealed, the specimen's owner took offense and retrieved it. Now, it's no longer available for direct study. (This is one of the reasons it's considered unethical to work on specimens in private collections.)

A lot of my Brazilian colleagues wrote extensively about this case. There are perfectly good museums in Brazil, there are perfectly qualified Brazilian scientists who could have collaborated on the project, and we have no idea whether it was legally shipped out of the country. This struck many of them as coming from the kind of attitude that allowed European colonial powers (as well as the US) to strip their overseas possessions (and even places they didn't control) of their natural and cultural patrimony. I think they're right.

To this day, if I want to look at crocodile remains (modern or fossil) from Africa, I don't inly go Nairobi, Addis Ababa, or Dar es Salaam. I also go to London, Paris, and other Western cities. Whether they should all be repatriated is not a simple thing, but it's a legitimate discussion to undertake.

I occasionally have people bring me things they bought at a rock show, or maybe even at an outdoor market in Brazil. They ask if we're willing to accept it as a donation for our paleo collections. I have to respond that we can't touch it - it would be way too ethically problematic. I won't report these people or anything - they genuinely didn't know there might be a law against buying such fossils, and so far, none of the specimens I've been shown has been anything other than a well-known species - but if they hoped they could write a donation off on their taxes, they're disappointed.