Laelaps

I guess it's appropriate that I just posted the trailer to the new Indiana Jones film, because as soon as I heard that there's a Tyrannosaurus up for auction on eBay my first thought was "That belongs in a museum!" I'm sure that some of you readers are more familiar with this particular case than I am, but according to the eBay listing the individual specimen is about 20% complete, primarily consisting of almost half the skull material, some leg bones, parts of the hip, and some vertebrae.

This isn't the first time "Barnum" (as the specimen is known) has gone up for auction. In 2004 the New York Times reported that the Tyrannosaurus remains were put up for auction as a result of a court order, the bones expected to bring in about $900,000. Part of the reason for the high price is that, according to those selling the fossils, the remains of "Barnum" are from the same animal that Barnum Brown excavated from the same area of Wyoming in 1900 but did not recognize as Tyrannosaurus, Brown's bones eventually making their way to the Natural History Museum in London. Whether this is true or not, I haven't heard, but it's obvious that the British museum did not end up purchasing the specimen.

The price tag for the same specimen four years later has been cut in half, although the asking price is still much more than what "Barnum" fetched the first time. According to this website, the remains were purchased for $90,000 in 2004, far short of the $900,000 that was hoped for. Why these fossils are going up for auction yet again is a mystery to me, and I have to say that I cringe a bit when I see these fossils changing hands so often rather than receiving proper study. This particular case is just the tip of the iceberg, though; there are still a slew of problems with land rights, disputes over ownership of fossils, clashes between private collectors & academics, and other maddening entanglements that complicate paleontology. American paleontology was born during the "Wild West" era, and it seems that (at least legally) things can still get pretty wild.

[I first received news of this issue via the Vertebrate Paleontology mailing list.]