This is why the commercial trade of dinosaur fossils should go extinct - the obscene practice of putting the rarest growth stages up for sale for extortion-level prices:
Instead of hating the rich, perhaps the lesson of losing T. rexes and Hector the Deinonychus to extortion-level auctions is to lobby our representatives to consider policy that protects world heritage grade fossils from the open market.
The auctions of spectacular dinosaur fossils like T. rex and Deinonychus shows our culture has turned its back on the values of science. That polarity is civilization-threatening - a willful lobotomization.
The stupidity of dinosaur fossil auctions at prices no museum can afford on their own: the $4 to 6 million for the Christie's Deinonychus for me equals ~133 to 200 years of fieldwork.
Yours truly with the upside-down skull of a small Triceratops (the width of the frill is indicated by my fingers) that I found last night on Bureau of Land Management-administered lands!
The Carthage Institute of Paleontology's star specimen of the 2022 field season. These are the fragments picked up from the surface - hopefully there's more in the ground!
Vertebrate paleontology's central weakness is its failure to persuade the public that vertebrate fossils - specifically dinosaur fossils - should not be commodities. The thriving art auction market in dinosaur fossils is, arguably, our own damn fault.
T. rexing in the time of Covid-19: yours truly today at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum (in the gallery before opening & collections for the rest of the day). Tomorrow: Bozeman!
A reliable source tells me that there's about 13 scientifically important Deinonychus specimens in museum & university collections. Two additional specimens, including the recently auctioned Hector, are privately owned - so 13% of the total sample is currently lost to science.
Turtles (NO LIPS) + Crocodylians (NO LIPS) + Birds (NO LIPS) = NO LIPS is the null hypothesis for the ancestral condition for archosaurs. Ergo: T. rex (NO LIPS). Beyond that, the similarity test of facial bone texture between tyrannosaurids with living crocs is passed. WTHMDYW?
Currently working on my first skeletal drawing since Appalachiosaurus - a lot more work involved than I first recalled! Yes, the new one is of a tyrannosaurid!
Fun fact: this Fall semester the Carthage College Paleontology program has 11 students, 0.42% of the student body, making it one of the largest undergraduate paleo programs in the US, Canada, and the UK! We attract students because we offer field, lab, and research experience!
A perfect example of the misalignment problem between the behavior of scientists and the ethics of science: the scientific study of a privately-owned Tyrannosaurus rex:
When you're a tyrannosaur worker and you wake up at 5 am to catch a 9:30 am flight, you know you're headed to the Museum of the Rockies to study T. rex and D. horneri for four weeks!
Upon learning this my enthusiasm for the new oviraptorosaurian taxon has completely deflated; it matters where the money goes, especially if it supports the commercial fossil market in dinosaurs:
It was a great pleasure to have presented today the talk "Tyrannosaurus rex: insights into the growth of the tyrant king and modern challenges faced by paleontology" at the weekly meeting of Carthage College's Paleontology Club!
Paleo crisis at Carthage. The grant in this quote would NOT have provided salary: "A $440,000 grant funding proposal....would have paid for the technician’s salary for the next four to five years, was declined, said Timmerman"
As with art, when paleontologists buy dino fossils off the shelf then the entire provenance must be published: how much paid, the commmercial entity, the entire chain of ownership, with names & dates. The common euphemism of "fossil was acquired by [institution name]" should end.
A pretty good 2018 field season; some highlights: 4 pachycephalosaur specimens, 1 alvarezsaurid thumb claw, 1 hybodont shark tooth, 2 Triceratops braincases, many plant fossils, and 4 K/Pg impact layer localities!
Finally saw Prehistoric Planet - overall OK, but what's with all the lips and cheeks on the dinos?! I thought the tyrannosaurs could've used facelifts (I know them too well not to be distracted by all the little inaccuracies). Regardless, the next level of realism was achieved!
Quote of the day: "Tyrannosaurus is the most superb carnivorous mechanism among the terrestrial Vertebrata, in which raptorial destructive power and speed are combined; it represents the climax in the evolution of a series which began with...Anchisaurus" H F. Osborn, 1916.
The most fitting analogy to the loss of dinosaur fossils to the market and private ownership is the burning of rare books: both are unique sets of information that are irreversibly lost.
As a vertebrate paleontologist who studies tyrannosaur evolution, I can unequivocally say that a hug from Supergirl would be the best possible moment in any T. rex's life!
@melissabenoist
Effectively a full day of ontogenizing Albertosaurus libratus, A. sarcophagus, and Daspletosaurus torosus! A new horizon establishes itself upon hours of hard work!
Very jarring to hear about the passing of Dr. Angela Milner, leading light of dino paleo at the NHM for many years. I had only met her once at an SVP meeting: Although my heart was in my throat, the interaction was cordial - the best sort of memory to keep of a colleague.
Closing in on the completion of the T. rex ontogeny ms. One of the final tasks I am currently working is drafting an image of what the Cleveland skull might have looked like uncrushed: looks really different...!
It's 4:30 am & do you know where your vertebrate paleontologist is?! Loading gear into a 15-seat van for an epic cross-country trip to Montana to start this season's fieldwork with an intrepid crew of students from Carthage College & the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design!
My hat's off to the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology for their moratorium on publication of Blood Amber fossils; may all other journals follow in kind:
The rigorous work of Hurlburt et al. (2013) showed that the brain of T. rex only occupied between 33% to 50% of the endocranial volume. That does not a baboon level intelligence make.