Dinosaurs: one poached, one paternal

A new ankylosaur was officially described in the Journal Current Science called, Minotaurasaurus ramachandrani, which can be found at http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/jan102009/65.pdf. The specimen is notable for its wonderful preservation and completeness of the skull, but mostly it is notable for the fact that it is a poached, completely illegal specimen. It was bought by a private individual at a gem and mineral show. The only locality data available is an inference of the Gobi Desert, somewhere in China or Mongolia, based on rock around the skull. Given that it is illegal to take fossils out of those countries, it had to be smuggled out. Therefore, the specimen is stolen property. The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology would not allow such a specimen to be published as they take a dim view of fossil theft.
The authors acknowledge the legal difficulties of the specimen, but, quite rightly I believe, say the specimen is too important not to describe and get out into the scientific literature. I am sure this article will add fuel to the debate about commercially sold fossils. As it stands, illegally obtained and privately owned specimens are generally not allowed to be studied as the important locality information is almost always unknown and doing so would seem only to encourage unethical commercial fossil dealers (this is not to say that commercial fossil dealers are all unethical, there are a few that follow the laws and do their best to collect pertinent data as the fossils are collected) as the studies and publicity therby raise the value of the specimen under study. Because privately owned fossils are off limits for study, the best fossils are lost to science. Additionally, because paleontologists are more rare than the fossils they study, most fossils are not collected in time and are simply weathered away.
Even though the SVP leaders take a hard line against commercial fossil dealers and would prefer that all fossils are given to scientists to study with none being allowed to be in private hands, I disagree. Professionals can not possibly collect all the fossils. Depending on only professional paleontologists with their meager funds to do all the collecting means very little fossil collecting will be done and most fossils will be lost. However, I agree with them that the fossils are a national heritage and should be accessible for use. Therefore, I propose that collecting fossils remain legal on private land, legal on public land with the proviso they must work with a professional paleontologist, and all discoveries be accessible to researchers. Thus, the fossils could be bought and sold, but the owners must allow researchers to study the specimen, although they do not have to surrender the specimen. I would also require that fossils brought into the country are treated like we do any archeological find. The laws applying to them in the country of origin apply here. If the fossil is smuggled out of a country, the fossil is confiscated with the smuggler arrested and tried as per any other piece of stolen property and the buyer arrested and tried for possession of stolen property.
The laws concerning the illegal smuggling of fossils into the country need to be vigorously applied. But rather than take a hard stance against all fossil trade, professional paleontologists would do much better by developing a collaborative relationship with the commercial dealers, who will always have more funds to collect fossils. A proper collaborative effort would greatly expand the fossils known to science. I for one am sick with the knowledge that a great deal of information that we as individual scientists know about, but can't tell anyone else because the information came from a private or stolen specimen.

Anyway, enough of that soapbox. The other news is an article in the Dec. 19 issue of Science by Varrichio and colleagues on dinosaur dads. I am somewhat amiss that I missed this and only found out about it via Science News. Varrichio et al. looked at the bones of a Citipati and Troodon that were found over nests and found that neither one showed evidence of medullary bone, which female birds form during egglaying. While they acknowledge that not finding exclusive female markers does not prove these are males, the view is bolstered by the fact that ratites are also predominantly paternal. Ratites include the large, flightless birds such as the ostrich and are the most closely related birds to the dinosaurs. Not only are ratites paternal, but they have very similar clutch sizes to that seen in Citipati and Troodon.
So it really isn't terribly surprising if this is indeed the case, at least for the more derived theropods. But it is good to see it being examined critically rather than just being assumed by inference. Now it remains to be seen how far down the lineage this extends, considering the extensive phylogenetic distance covered by dinosaurs.