Re: Dinosaur eggs

[rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe)]

tobin@cshl.org (Henry Tobin) writes:

> I have seen advertisements of dinosaur eggs for sale. 

I'm about to change the welcome message for new subscribers.  The new
message will explicitly direct people not to ask about or advertise
fossils for sale.  Most of us on this list are here because we're
interested in sharing information about dinosaurs.  Making fossils a
commodity has a tendency to lead to practices which are destructive of
the fossils and the information obtainable from them.  Much of the
scientific value of a fossil is lost as soon as it's taken out of the
ground unless appropriate references are kept with it.  People hoping
only to turn a profit from fossils are less likely to care about such
things, and thus are a hindrance to the sharing of information we'd
all like to have.

This list is still run anarchically.  Without changing that fact, I
can't stop you from submitting such questions.  However, since you're
most likely to offend the professionals that are most capable of
helping you learn about the animals in which you're interested, I hope
you'll appreciate that by buying and selling fossils you're ultimately
hurting yourself as well as posterity.

-- 
Mickey Rowe     (rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu)

P.S. If any of you have any additional suggestions about changes I
can/should make to the welcome message in order to make conversations
here more fruitful, please let me know.  It would be good if we could
point people to a site from which they can retrieve FAQs as well.  For
those already working on them, how is that project coming?  For those
that are not, would you like to volunteer to help?