Open Letter To Carl

The following post started off as an e-mail response on the VERTPALEO list to a non-degreed enthusiast who has managed to remain astonishingly ignorant and naive over the past twenty years about how and why vertebrate paleontologists do things, in spite of the fact that this individual was well-known and knowledgeable on the dinosaur literature when I was just starting my undergrad degree. He has, as far as I can tell, gained no deeper understanding into how science or vertebrate paleontology works in all that time, and periodically bad-mouths researchers in spite of the fact that they provide him with a constant supply of dinosaur scientific literature that he needs to survive. Imagine, if you will, a baby that sucks on the teat of a woman who is not his mother, and then punches her because he thinks she is a selfish woman for eating and drinking so that she can produce milk. Yet he won't stop sucking (so to speak).

We will call him Carl.

Carl’s most oft-repeated bit of inanity in the last year or so is to accuse vertebrate paleontologists of what he calls “Daffy Duck syndrome” (or some such bullshit) because we allegedly go “MINE-MINE-MINE!” (i.e., we WANT vertebrate fossils found on private property so that we can do research and write papers and learn shit). I tried to explain the distinction between WANTING fossils and EXPECTING private land owners to hand them over, and why we would presume to act disappointed if a land owner reneged on a promise to let us have something. I wrote a response to Carl, which I am still pretty proud of. Let’s read!

Carl, despite periodic accusations on this list, I have never personally heard ANY American paleontologist say that they do not think landowners have the right to decide what happens with fossils found on their personal property, or that they want to enact legislation which will allow state or federal governments to confiscate fossils found on private property. This is an oft-repeated bit of horseshit. Such paleontologists may exist, but if they do they are few and far between.

Do we WANT fossils found on private land? Sure we do. Such fossils provide valuable scientific information, and are therefore of interest to us. If we had these fossils in our possession, we could write papers about them that you could then read. It is my understanding like you like collecting and reading papers on dinosaurs. Paleontologists need fossils to write papers for you, Carl. This does not mean we think land owners HAVE to give them to us.

However, once a land owner has specifically TOLD paleontologists that they may collect, there is a commitment of time and money that the paleontologist makes in collecting the fossils and preparing them. This time and money is wasted if the landowner reneges and takes the specimen back. If a specimen is published on, and especially if it is a type specimen, then there is also the loss of time and effort that went into writing the paper, as claims about the specimen are not longer testable by future researchers who cannot examine the specimen.

If the land owner had simply said "NO" when asked for permission to collect on their property, than these issues would not have even arisen. The paleontologist would simply have been sad and disappointed and found something else to do.

Or, imagine if Mickey Mouse agreed to give or sell Daffy Duck a house, and so Daffy got rid of his our old home and packed all of his duck stuff into a moving van, and then showed up at Mickey's house and Mickey and Minnie were like, psych, we are keeping the house, sorry about all the effort and trouble you went through for nothing, Daffy, ha ha! Daffy would be upset, wouldn't he? Wouldn't you feel sorry for Daffy, especially if he was going to let you sleep on his couch and criticize his house-acquiring habits without paying rent or helping keep the place picked up? There is a difference between saying that the homeowner does not have the right to decide what to do with their own home, and being upset that they reneged after they SAID they would give it to you and you spent time and money moving all of your stuff. Do you understand the difference, Carl?

Carl’s response can be paraphrased as “nuh-uh, you don’t know what researchers think.” I did not respond.

Feeling spurned by the academic community, Carl has found solace in the arms of commercial collectors, who make him feel welcome. He has made appeals on the VERTPALEO list for SVP to be more welcoming to commercial collectors, and was answered brilliantly and patiently by Eric Scott. To paraphrase, less patiently:

Commercial collection is not vertebrate paleontology. It is commercial collection. The goal of commercial collection is to make money through the commercial sale of vertebrate fossils. That is why it is called commercial collection. The goal of vertebrate paleontology is to learn about vertebrate fossils and what they tell us about extinct vertebrates. That is why it is called vertebrate paleontology instead of commercial collection. If the goal of vertebrate paleontology was to make money off the sale of vertebrate fossils, than vertebrate paleontology would be called commercial collection, which wouldn’t make any goddamn sense at all.

Commercial collectors and vertebrate paleontology can have mutually beneficial and informative relationships, but that does not change the fact that their fundamental goals are not the same. Otherwise commercial collection would be called vertebra…well, see the above paragraph. Scrupulous and helpful commercial collectors may be welcome guests in the vertebrate paleontological community, and provide useful information and resources, but this is still the Society of VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY, not the Society of COMMERICAL COLLECTION. See the above paragraph again if you are getting confused.

For vertebrate paleontologists to do vertebrate paleontology, we need fossils in public repositories. For this reason, we do not SUPPORT the sale of vertebrate fossils to private collectors (although this is not the same as saying that we actively FIGHT the right of private individuals to sell their personal property). To sum up, we do not actively support commercial collection because we are trying to do vertebrate paleontology. Because this is the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. It was founded by vertebrate paleontologists.