Illicit Fossil Trafficking

how palaeontological objects end up in places where they don't belong

The illicit trafficking of palaeontological objects occurs within a broader global pattern of illegal trade that spans a wide array of commodities. From antiquities, firearms, and drugs to nuclear material, orchids, succulents, and pangolins, virtually anything of value is susceptible to illegal markets. It is therefore not entirely surprising that fossils, with their scientific, cultural, and monetary worth, are also traded on grey and black markets. Very much like orchid trafficking, however, it remains a fairly obscure issue (an Orchideenthema if you will) despite the losses it often causes to local communities, scientists, and the conservation of the palaeontological heritage as a whole.

The most illegally trafficked animal in the world. The pangolin walks off into the bush while feeding.

The very notion of illicit trafficking implies the existence of legal frameworks designed to regulate the trade. Multiple different layers of legal restrictions may come into play when fossils are traded, both domestically and internationally. Among them are:

  • export restrictions which make the removal of fossils from a given jurisdiction subject to permission by a competent government body or ban the export of certain fossils (e.g., type specimens) entirely;
  • import restrictions by which states, typically market countries, ban the import of unlawfully exported fossils and thus enforce foreign export restrictions; and
  • national ownership laws which automatically assign the ownership of newly discovered fossils to the state, thus excluding in principle the possibility of private acquisition.

While the earliest pieces of legislation seeking to impose limitations on the fossil trade date back to the early 20th century,1 the unjustified or ethically doubtful removal of palaeontological specimens from foreign territories has a long-standing history that continues to the present day. Palaeontologists have often consciously benefited from the opportunities which contexts such as colonial domination or military occupation. Examples range from the better known German Tendaguru expedition to modern-day Tanzania over Eugène Dubois' search for the 'missing link' between apes and humans in what is today Indonesia to heavy lobbying by German palaeontologists to excavate Iguanodon fossils at Bernissart in occupied Belgium during WWI.

This history has led to a highly uneven distribution of fossil material along a colonial North-South divide that distorts our understanding of deep-time biodiversity. Even worse, these practices continue: in the form of fossils being smuggled from source countries in the Global South (Brazil, for instance, is heavily affected), or in the context of armed conflict. Here, the thriving trade in amber with fossil inclusions from civil war zones in Myanmar and the large-scale removal of fossils from Crimea by Russian scientists come to mind.

“In a history book about international scientific communities such as natural history museums, collections, and research institutes – still unwritten – one would probably discover that attempted or realized theft of fossils are often to be found among the behavioural patterns of science institutions.”2

Lizard in Cretaceous amber from Kachin state Myanmar 99 million years old

My research into the illicit trafficking of palaeontological objects traces historical patterns and outlines current challenges that relate to the issue of illicit trafficking in fossils. My first substantive contribution was a blog post on the trade in Myanmar amber, an issue about which I first learned in a YouTube video by Ben G Thomas. This got me involved in a more extensive study that has ever since become a point of reference for researchers working on Myanmar amber who are committed to tackling the ethical and legal issues head-on. Beyond this, my work has focused on the issue from a restitution perspective, examining how illicitly obtained fossils can be ethically and legally returned to their countries of origin.

A core component of my research has been the comparative analysis of domestic legal frameworks in key fossil source countries, including Brazil, Morocco, and Myanmar. However, there remains a pressing need for further data collection and analysis, not solely from a legal standpoint but through interdisciplinary approaches that can better illuminate the scale and mechanisms of fossil trafficking.

Bibliography

Footnotes

  1. As one of the first countries, Mongolia banned the export of fossils from its territory already in 1924. ↩
  2. Roolf, Christoph. “The Attempted Theft of Dinosaur Skeletons during the German Occupation of Belgium (1914-1918) and Some Other Cases of Looting Cultural Possessions of Natural History.” In Bernissart Dinosaurs and Early Cretaceous Terrestrial Ecosystems, edited by Pascal Godefroit, 21–34. Life of the Past. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012, p. 25 (emphasis added). ↩