Re: Dino/Birds? was Mesozoic snow? and fund for Antonio

[Jeff Hecht <jeff@jeffhecht.com>]

At 3:57 PM -0700 6/16/05, Jaime A. Headden wrote:

>  Attempts to indictate a desire for the collectors to make precious all
>material uncovered is futile apparently, as this has been going on for 10
>years. The people paying the money for the material want feathered dinosaurs,
>not just any old *Hyphalosaurus*. That the Chinese government owns and is thus
>entitled to the fossils means they will not feel compelled to compete in the
>market for purchasing "scientifically important" material. To my knowledge,
>this is why they continue to work the quarries and perhaps twice and most
>likely three times more what we get into museums is released to private hands
>for the expenditure of yen. Which gets food, clothes, and so forth. It's not a
>_perfect_ economy, but it favors the private collectors (aka, people with money
>to spend), whereas museums cannot compete since there is no money to be
>exchanged (unless it's _sub rosa_).
>

It's my impressions that the museums can pay farmers for fossils, although they 
may not be able to compete with the smugglers. However, the smugglers seem to 
be looking for particular things - like feathers - so they may miss the 
unexpected. 

There's also quite a bit of history in China. Although the Yixian fossils are 
new to us, the Chinese have been exploring the deposits for years, and farmers 
have long been selling fossil fish in local markets. The deposits crop out all 
over the area, so early efforts to guard them proved impractical. Some locals 
apparently have hidden sites which they won't identify to outsiders, so the 
locations where some specimens were found are not precisely known. 

== Jeff Hecht