Growing up, Danny Case became interested in fossils through his father, an amateur paleontologist.
Starting at age 10, he says he began traveling with his father and his father’s friends to hunt and collect fossils, first on the East Coast and then, as he grew older, across the United States.
In his early teens, Case was a serious fossil collector, spending several weeks digging in the desert or along rivers and streams.
Today, at his home in Reno, Nevada, Case has a collection of more than 2,000 fossils — mostly teeth of various species, about 10 percent of which he says are from different dinosaurs. Hunting and collecting fossils or buying them at auction is a passion that has never left him.
“You’re holding a tooth that’s 125 million years old, you feel small, you feel insignificant when you realize how big this world is and was and how diverse it was,” he told ABC News.
But whether Case or others should have these fossils in their private collections in the first place has been a matter of debate for decades.
The debate recently sparked public interest after a nearly complete stegosaurus skeleton dubbed Apex sold for a record $44.6 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on July 17 to hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin.
The practice of private buyers acquiring dinosaur fossils is fraught with controversy. Some say that private buyers obtain fossils legally and there is nothing wrong with displaying them in private collections, while others say that fossils are part of natural history and should only be displayed in museums and research institutions.
“I am fundamentally … against the sale of fossils. Most countries around the world protect their cultural and biological cultural remains as unique and part of the public domain, and I would like us to do that,” Dr. Paul Sereno, a paleontologist and archaeologist at the University of Chicago, told ABC News. “We need to appreciate this as our unique history in the United States, to make sure these specimens remain in museums and in the scientific realm for our next generation.”
Turning point
Curators and paleontologists told ABC News they believe the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex named “Sue” was the catalyst behind the dinosaurs being sold at exorbitant prices.
Sue was discovered on private land by the dinosaur’s namesake, Susan Hendrickson, a volunteer at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research (BHIGR) in South Dakota, according to Peter Larson, president of the group that helped excavate Sue.
It wasn’t long before a long legal battle ensued with the landowner, the excavators and the US government claiming ownership of Sue. Sue was eventually declared chattel and owned by the owner of the private land, Maurice Williams.
Williams decides to sell the skeleton and contacts Sotheby’s to put Sue up for auction. It was sold in 1997 for $8.4 million to the Chicago Museum of Natural History.
Larson told ABC News that Sue’s sale was “ironic” because BHIGR, which produces fossils and geological exhibits for museums around the world, had planned to put the fossils in a museum.
He and others say Sue’s sale forever changed people’s minds about how much dinosaur fossils can be sold for.
“I think selling Sue was a turning point, [for] the commercial sale of fossils,” Spencer Lucas, curator of paleontology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque, told ABC News. .”
“So one of the things that happened was before Sue was sold, folks [came] here all the time at the museum, maybe 100 people a year, to show me or the other curators fossils and find out what they are, how important they are,” he continued. “After Sue was sold, there was another question they asked those people. It was always, “What’s this fossil worth?” or “Will the museum buy this fossil?”
Since then, other fossils have sold for millions, including another nearly complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton called “Stan,” which was auctioned in October 2020 for a then-record $31.8 million. Officials from Abu Dhabi’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism told National Geographic that they own the dinosaur and that the skeleton will be displayed in a new natural history museum due to open in 2025.
Experts say most public institutions, including museums and research centers, do not have the money often required to auction large items such as dinosaur skeletons.
To acquire Sue in 1997, the Field Museum received financial assistance from McDonald’s Corp., Ronald McDonald House Charities, Walt Disney World, the California State University system, and individual donors.
“These types of fossils that are sold commercially, for the most part, the only way public institutions can get them is if someone buys the fossils, who has the money, and then gives them, donates them to the institution,” said Lucas. “Honestly, I can’t think of a museum that has a budget that would allow them to spend millions and millions of dollars on a dinosaur fossil.”
The researchers said the Apex sale would likely raise the price of commercially available dinosaur fossils, making it even more difficult for museums or other public institutions to acquire them.
“If someone pays $44 million for a dinosaur skeleton, what will the next dinosaur skeleton sell for? This will act as an incentive for commercial and private fossil collecting businesses because there is clearly a lot more money to be made from selling fossils than was previously made,” Lucas said. “Selling fossils is a lot like selling art and the price is really what the market will pay.”
The researchers suggest that the sale of Apex will not only increase the number of commercial paleontologists trying to find fossils, but potentially increase the number of illegal traders as well.
“Will it be a dramatic, spectacular clash? No, but I think it just reinforces people’s idea, and often unfounded, that a bone on their property is worth millions of dollars,” Sereno said.
Advantages of private collection
Despite the debate surrounding the idea of private buyers, collectors and researchers alike say there can be some benefits to private collecting.
Case said he sees his collection as research teaching materials used to educate the general public about fossils.
He said he writes two daily Facebook posts, one about the fossil of the day and the other about the daily shark tooth, including a biography of the particular species.
“I like it and I enjoy being able to teach people who don’t know, they don’t care that much, they’re new to this hobby,” Case said. “Opening people’s eyes to the bigger picture has always been one of my things. . . . For me, it’s a learning and teaching tool.”
Case said all of his fossils were legally acquired through discovery or auction. Although he views the fossilized teeth he owns as a research tool, he said they only have so much academic value for museums.
“Fossils in museums tend to be skeletal fossils in museums,” he said, pointing out that his collection is mostly made up of individual teeth. “The academic value of these teeth, in a museum situation or even from a paleontologist’s perspective, is isolated. Everything I have is for the most part identified to the species level, so nothing new. Nothing found in my collection.”
Larson said the greatest value of fossils is when they can be displayed, which can educate people about Earth’s evolution or inspire young children to pursue science and paleontology. He said this is true whether they are on display in a museum or in a private collection.
“If [young people] see [fossils] in some rich person’s home, they can still get the same experience,” Larson said. “And if a person is going to spend that much money, they’re not just going to say, ‘Well, I’m tired of this dinosaur that I just paid for $44 million,’ or ‘I’m just going to throw it away.’
Griffin indicated that he intended to explore loaning the specimen to an American institution, saying in a statement after the sale that “Apex was born in America and will stay in America!”
Sereno said one positive result of Griffin’s purchase of Apex is that the hedge fund billionaire saved the fossils from leaving the US and falling into the hands of a foreign suitor.
Other fossil-rich countries, including Canada and Mongolia, say the fossils are government property and ban the buying and selling of fossils. However, there are no such laws to prevent them from being sold in the US if they are found on private property.
“We cannot protect fossils from extinction, from leaving the scientific realm, if they are found on private land,” Sereno said. “So this is a discussion that ultimately we may never have in the United States because we have a long tradition of private property,” Sereno said.
However, researchers may still have a way to study dinosaur bones that are held in private collections.
Almost every time a dinosaur fossil is collected, they undergo a CT scan. This allows the bones to be digitally backed up and allows researchers to gather data about the dinosaur’s body and how it looked and functioned.
Larson said that even if the original bones end up in a private collection, as long as they have been scanned and all the digital data is preserved, that means they can be accessed by researchers, scientists, students and others.
The role of the auction house
While there are questions about whether there should be private acquisition of dinosaur fossils, there are differing opinions about the role that auction houses play.
In the case of Apex, Sotheby’s hired commercial paleologist Jason Cooper, who discovered the Stegosaurus skeleton, to search for fossils.
Some say auction houses have no good reason to reject a fossil for auction as long as it was acquired legally.
“It’s just business; auction houses are a business there,” Larson said. “They’re in business to sell objects to people and make money off of it, and they’re all legally collected fossils.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with putting them up for auction.”
Others are more critical, saying auction houses are playing an active role, further perpetuating the practice of auctioning off fossils instead of donating them.
“They have the auspices and drive to make money, and so they will not only sell it to the highest bidder, but they also do other unscrupulous things that would be easy to check,” Sereno said.
Sereno said he has seen fossils for sale at auction that claim to be from Niger, but Niger has a national law that prohibits the sale of fossils — meaning either the fossils were obtained illegally or are fraudulent.
“It doesn’t take much to verify the legality of what you’re selling, but they don’t and no one is forcing it,” he said. “So I would say it’s an active role and they have to take more care to follow the laws of our country, but also the laws of other countries.
