Fri, October 24, 1997

On the morning of Saturday, October 4, Disney, McDonald’s and, to a lesser extent, Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and the California State University system, paid $8.34 million for the most completely preserved remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex yet unearthed. Sotheby’s of New York auctioned the fossils on behalf of landowner Maurice Williams, a Native American of the Cheyenne River Sioux, on whose land the dinosaur was found. Williams and Sotheby’s (who makes an $834,000 commission on the deal) have offered the museum a generous payment plan since it is an institution of learning. Williams will never have to work again in his life.

The dinosaur, however, has a lot of work ahead of her. Before the end of the century, she has to be cleaned, cast twice, mounted, and copies of her sent around the globe (on McDonald’s ticket) and set up in Orlando, Florida. (Would Disney pass up a chance to make a buck on the deal? Not in 65 million years.) The Tyrannosaurus has a nickname, and that name is Sue. Besides being a cutesy synonym for the process that brought the fossils to the attention of the nation (The largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus specimen ever unearthed? No interest. Involved in litigation? Hello!), this name also signifies the history and injustice the dinosaur has endured since its discovery. Sue is named after Susan Hendrickson, the woman who discovered the dinosaur while on break from a herbivore dig nearby. Susan worked as a summer volunteer for Peter Larson at the Black Hills Institute for Geological Research. In August of 1990, while the rest of her group was tending to a broken-down field vehicle, Susan went for a walk and happened upon the Tyrannosaurus rex . The Black Hills team named it after her and spent five days removing the fossils for transport back to the lab in Hill City, South Dakota, where they would be studied. Why, then, isn’t Sue being studied at the Black Hills Institute today?

Well, it’s a complicated story. Peter Larson contacted the Cheyenne River Sioux before digging on their land, and acquired the excavation rights at a cost of $5000. (Even including the cost of excavation teams, vehicles, and equipment, a far sight better than $8 million.) However, unbeknownst to Larson or the Sioux, the fossils were protected under the Federal Antiquities Act, which specifies that no artifacts can be removed without federal clearance. Once the landowners realized what they were losing, they checked into possible avenues of getting Sue back. Fortunately for them, they had placed the land in trust with the federal government for a tax advantage, and some say that makes Sue the property of the government. This captured the attention of investigators, but the government’s claims to Sue were void because the Sioux retained mineral rights (after all, they were able to sell them to Pete Larson), so the final decision was that Sue belonged to the Sioux. The mineral rights Larson bought could only be applied to what he could dig out of the land that wasn’t protected by the Antiquities Act. So, without reimbursing him the $5000, the FBI showed up at the Black Hills Institute on May 14, 1992, and confiscated Sue. She spent the intermediate half-decade locked in a warehouse at the South Dakota School of Mines. Only recently were the 140 crates that carry Sue’s skeleton transported to New York for auction. Nobody was allowed to study Sue during all that time.

Initial scientific objections to the auction – unconscionably irresponsible on the part of Maurice Williams – targeted the fact that anyone could purchase the T. rex. A wealthy private collector could end up with the fossils (Bill Gates could have paid one hundred times what Sue sold for without feeling it) and make Sue’s femurs into an end table. Fortunately for all of us and our children, this did not happen. Sue’s skeleton will be available for public observation and study. It’s unfortunate that Disney and McDonald’s end up with some controlling interest in Sue’s agenda, but in the interest of their own PR, they’re being nice and only taking away casts of Sue’s bones, not the real things. You can bet, however, that there will be big plaques to each of them in the Field Museum when Sue’s exhibit opens in 2000. But, even with the dangers of the auction behind us, the idea of fossil ownership is still a touchy one.

The Federal Antiquities Act is actually designed to protect archaeological remains. Dinosaur remains are very different. It’s the difference between archaeology and paleontology. It’s the difference between anthropology and paleobiology. It’s very important to regulate the excavation of human remains, something that has become more apparent in recent years. Artifacts have become fun for wealthy collectors, and therefore the theft of this booty from beneath our American soil has become quite profitable. Estimates state that over half of the 6,000 recorded sites on national forest lands in Arizona have been destroyed by looters. In southwest Virginia, nearly 95% of Native American graves have been destroyed or severely damaged by looters.  In order to protect the interests of our nation’s (and our world’s) history, these artifacts should be protected from theft. However, the same law that applies to human remains should not apply to dinosaurs.

Pete Larson should have obtained an Antiquities Permit from the government before digging, under current law. But how was he to know that regulations aimed at Indian pottery should apply to him? Laws currently on the books in Alberta, Canada (a global hotbed of dinosaur specimens) nationalize all fossils, on public or private lands. A clear new law directed at nationalizing American fossils would make disputes like Larson’s much easier to understand. If excavators had one office to turn to for all paleontological digging rights, there would be no confusion about how to clear a prospective dig. Larson would have known who to call before digging, and Maurice Williams would have known what rights he was selling to the researchers from Black Hills.

This problem continues to plague paleontological research. Recently, Keith Rigby of the University of Notre Dame unearthed a new specimen that may be a large Tyrannosaurus or possibly a new, larger carnivore. He found his specimen in Glasgow, Montana, along with the bones of numerous other dinosaurs from the late Cretaceous Period, which ended about 65 million years ago. However, before he could finish excavating the fossils, former landowner Steve Walton and his cousin Fred showed up to try to take the bones away themselves. Walton said that while the Farm Service Agency had foreclosed on his land, he had yet to receive a credit for a repaid loan and thus claimed ownership of the land and any dinosaurs interred within. The FBI again had to step in because the FSA is a federal agency. Rigby’s discovery will probably be okay, but all of this could have been avoided if one central agency handled all excavation rights. When Rigby contacted this agency, they would have been aware of any ownership disputes on the land, and could have informed Rigby, the FSA and the Waltons, in the interest of full disclosure, and avoided any last-minute surprises.

We need a new law that nationalizes and regulates all fossils, so that they can remain properly in the hands of researchers and not end up as ornamentations on the walking stick of a wealthy venture capitalist.

© onebee · all rights reserved