Jurassic Pluck: $2.95 Million T. Rex Listed On eBay, Montana Law Targets Ninth Circuit Fossil Ruling
Fossils aren’t only scientific treasures used to introduce kids to paleontology. They are also big business.
Fossils are cool. You really missed something in childhood if you never got the chance to spend a weekend wandering through the halls of the Field Museum or the Museum of the Rockies or the Science Museum of Minnesota, gazing up at the remains of the monsters of a bygone era, and imagining the nearly unrecognizable world that came before our own.
But today, fossils aren’t only scientific treasures used to introduce kids to paleontology. They are also big business. And the law, despite having had since the Cretaceous period to prepare itself, is still lagging behind that reality.
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Privately Financed Dig Uncovered Valuable Juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex Remains
Unless someone snatches it up before my deadline, right now there is a fossilized juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton listed on eBay for the Buy It Now price of $2,950,000 (plus shipping, although I think eBay’s estimated price of $64.05 to ship to my location is a bit low). While a sale would be good news for amateur fossil hunter Alan Detrich, the owner of the juvenile T. rex, a lot of academics and scientists have a big problem with the specimen potentially going into the hands of a private collector.
Juvenile T. rex fossils are exceedingly rare. The eBay item description calls this “Most Likely the Only BABY T-Rex in the World!” That does not quite check out, as the University of Kansas has its own juvenile Tyrannosaur specimen that a team from the University unearthed during a dig in Montana. Still, it rubs a lot of people the wrong way to have something of such extreme rarity and scientific value up for grabs to private bidders.
Detrich, for his part, emphasizes in his eBay listing that the “incentives of the private market” and the “possibility of finance” are the only reason many amateurs are able to find such natural treasures in the first place. He did graciously loan the specimen to the University of Kansas Natural History Museum for public display over the last two years. He also quite reasonably pointed out to the Lawrence Journal-World that when eccentric rich people buy something as esoteric as a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, it usually ends up by bequest back in the hands of the scientific community eventually:
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Millionaires aren’t rich enough to buy these dinosaurs. I don’t have a problem with selling to billionaires, because they’ve got enough money to protect this fossil and take really good care of it … At some point, all these things end up in museums.
Dueling Dinosaurs, Worth Even More, At Heart Of Mineral Rights Litigation
Another highly valuable, even rarer set of dinosaur fossils, the so-called “dueling dinosaurs” believed to be worth more than $7 million, gave rise to the case Murray v. BEJ Minerals LLC et al in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The dueling dinosaurs are a 22-foot-long theropod and a 28-foot-long ceratopsian found by a Montana rancher. They were locked in combat some 66 million years ago before being instantly entombed in sandstone. These fossils are incredibly well-preserved and may even contain remnants of soft tissue.
The problem for the Murrays was that although the previous owners of the ranch had transferred their surface rights, they reserved two-thirds of their mineral rights. If dinosaur fossils qualify as “minerals,” the previous owners could claim a share in the preserved bones.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Montana found that dinosaur fossils are not, legally speaking, minerals. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit reversed. On April 4, upon the vote of a majority of nonrecused active judges of the Ninth Circuit, it was ordered that the case be reheard en banc. A rehearing date has not yet been set.
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Murray prompted action by Montana lawmakers. On April 16, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock signed into law a bill unanimously approved by the Montana House and Senate which states “fossils are not minerals and that fossils belong to the surface estate, unless conveyed by a clear and express grant.” Just about everyone with a stake in fossil excavation, including commercial and institutional collectors, landowners, and museums, all cheered the passage of the law, which they believe will help fossils remain available for education and study and keep them out of the quagmire that is mineral rights litigation.
The new Montana law won’t necessarily affect the outcome of Murray. But of the rehearing and the new law, prominent fossil excavator Peter Larson (who famously led the efforts to unearth the T. rex specimen known as “Sue” in the 90s) quipped to United Press International:
If this isn’t reversed, at least the other fossils are safe and these will be the only fossils that have ever suffered the indignity of being called a mineral.
Indeed.
It’s on all of us to make sure that scientifically valuable fossil specimens remain available for research and for public enjoyment, and despite their great monetary value, do not simply become a commodity. While more accurately defining fossil ownership rights does not necessarily keep important specimens in the right hands – it places a great deal of faith in the free market – it at least will help keep more scientifically important fossils out of mineral rights litigation. That, my friends, is a win for everyone, and a step in the right direction.
Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.