FINDING, SELLING FOSSILS MAY OR MAY NOT BE LEGAL

Expert says laws on selling bones differ, depending on the area.

With dinosaur skeletons selling for as much as $500,000 each, America has a new breed of criminal: bone bandits.

This year, there have been reports of bone bandits in Colorado and Wyoming. In Wyoming, rustlers raided a fossil dig of a paleontology crew from Harvard University.

Richard Stucky, curator of paleontology and department head of earth sciences at the Denver Museum of Natural History, says fossils from dinosaurs are needed to study the past so we can face the future.

"There are events that have happened, like global warming, or catastrophes, like a meteorite hitting the Earth, things that we can use to better understand our present and future," he told Children's Express. "By understanding what happens in situations like environmental change in the past, we can get an idea about how that affects life on Earth."

Children's Express recently called Stucky at the Denver Museum to learn about modern bone bandits, the retrieval of bones and the legal issues surrounding the collection of bones.

Selling dinosaur bones, according to Stucky, is legal or illegal, depending on where you live.

"In some circumstances it is illegal to sell dinosaur bones and to buy them _ when they come off lands that are owned by either state or federal governments that restrict the sale of dinosaur bones.

"Dinosaur bones that are found on private property can be sold and bought because they are the property of a private landowner," says Stucky.

Internationally, some countries such as Brazil and Argentina have made it illegal to buy or sell any of their fossils outside of their countries, says Stucky.

"Going back into the 1880s and through the early part of this century here in North America, there have always been people who have collected fossils for a living, legitimately and legally," Stucky notes.

When museum collectors find a fossil, it becomes either the property of the museum or, if found on federal or state lands, the property of the federal government or the state government, Stucky says.

Collecting fossils for some people is a hobby.

"In many cases, individuals who collect fossils, who save them, (they) enjoy them for their beauty . . . They tell us about the ancient past."

Stucky began his museum career as a volunteer in paleontology (the study of plant and animal fossils) in 1971, after he saw an article in National Geographic magazine about human fossils, "It just really inspired me to realize that there was a much richer history to human evolution, to evolution of life on Earth."

Stucky graduated from the University of Colorado in 1982 and began his professional career at the Denver museum soon after graduation.

He says he finds his work very rewarding.

"It's really exciting when you make a new discovery, when you're out in the field. And, when you get back to the lab, I find it to be a lot of fun to write up the papers and also to give lectures to school groups and scientific groups.

"We don't seek any rewards other than the idea that we can go ahead and study, and in some cases, we can display them (fossils) for the public so that everybody can enjoy them in our museum exhibits."