[HN Gopher] The largest stegosaurus fossil ever found heads to a...
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The largest stegosaurus fossil ever found heads to auction
Author : samclemens
Score : 19 points
Date : 2024-05-31 03:10 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| leto_ii wrote:
| https://archive.ph/4fB3T
| chewmieser wrote:
| Gift link:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/science/stegosaurus-fossi...
| ultimoo wrote:
| > Jason Cooper, a commercial paleontologist, went for a walk
| around his property near the aptly named Colorado town of
| Dinosaur with a friend and found a bit of femur protruding from
| some rock.
|
| what an opener
| chess_buster wrote:
| It's so sad to see fossils being sold.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I see large fossils
| being hauled out by individuals who have no interest in them,
| when I approach to chat, other than to sell or illegally
| export. They remind me of gollum, seeing everyone around them
| as a threat to their riches.
|
| But a lot of fossils wouldn't see the light of day unless there
| was a commercial market. I have heard stories on fossil forums
| about countries where there are restrictions and quarries will
| just crush them along with all the other rock.
|
| In my country the vast majority of palaeontology is done by
| amateurs. There is only so much public funding but loads of
| amateurs. If private ownership was banned then academic
| research would go to near zero.
| lukan wrote:
| I guess it is the same thing with other archeologic
| artefacts. Here in germany, if you find something old and
| remarkable, you must report it and you will get nothing, no
| matter how long you searched. So most of that stuff is
| happening illegal and underground, which means that most
| findings never make their way to the researchers and the
| public, like this here allmost did not:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_sky_disc
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Creating positive incentives for landowners and discoverers
| is important. This shows up repeatedly as an issue with both
| archaeological and endangered species discoveries in many
| countries, including the US, where landowners are strongly
| disincentivized to report any discoveries since it can have a
| strong negative impact on the value of their land and their
| ability to use it. As often as not this leads to the
| destruction of the thing people are trying to preserve e.g.
| "shoot, shovel, shut up". [0] It is understandably difficult
| to get people to act against their own interest.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot,_shovel,_and_shut_up
| ramesh31 wrote:
| There are untold millions of fossils waiting to be found. We
| will never have a shortage of them. This would have never been
| excavated if it were not for the financial incentive to do so.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| As far as we can tell, Stegosaurus died out about 145 million
| years ago, while Tyrannosaurus showed up about 72 million years
| ago.
|
| There's more time between the last Stegosaurus and the first
| T-Rex then there is between the last T-Rex and us right now. A
| little off topic, but it's kind of mind-blowing to think of just
| how long the dinosaurs were around.
| gweinberg wrote:
| It looks to me like it is exactly the same amount of time. 72 +
| 72 = 145, within scientific error.
| jmclnx wrote:
| As a kid, Stegosauruses where my favorite. And I still always
| hate it when dinosaur articles need to mention the T-Rex, like
| this one :)
|
| Anyway as others said, sad to see this being sold, but with how
| pure research budgets have been and probably will be cut, I guess
| they have no choice.
| tosser0001 wrote:
| There are a small handful of relatively well-know dinosaurs:
| stegosaurus being one of them. There's also Tyrannosaurus rex,
| Brontosaurus (maybe you're not supposed to call them that
| anymore), Triceratops and maybe a couple of others. Why were
| these ones so "famous"? Were they the earliest ones discovered?
| most common? Just fine examples of their type?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Why were these ones so "famous"?
|
| Jurassic Park.
| rcpt wrote:
| They were famous before Jurassic Park.
|
| Jurassic Park introduced everyone to velociraptors. But
| stegosaurs and T-Rex were always battling it out in kids
| art classes
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Why were these ones so "famous"? Were they the earliest
| ones discovered? most common? Just fine examples of their
| type?_
|
| I think it can be mostly explained by the first Jurassic Park
| movie.
| tosser0001 wrote:
| Their "fame" certainly well pre-dated that movie. These
| were the ones I knew as a kid in the 60s and 70s, and would
| be featured in old stop animation movies even before my
| time.
| vundercind wrote:
| Seconding other poster that all those were already famous.
| Like if you bought a small set of plastic dinosaurs before
| that movie, those would pretty much be guaranteed to be in
| the set, plus some sort of hadrosaur/duckbill and maybe an
| ankylosaurus.
|
| Land Before Time included most of those in the "main cast"
| but I think it was following the trend, not setting it.
|
| Velociraptor (well, the fake Deinonychus-like "velociraptor
| antirrhopus" or whatever from the book/movie) and
| definitely Dilophosaurus got a huge popularity boost from
| Jurassic Park.
| lolinder wrote:
| > with how pure research budgets have been and probably will be
| cut, I guess they have no choice.
|
| The seller is described as a commercial paleontologist, so it's
| not like this is a sad outcome for him and his team that they
| arrived at of necessity. They set out to find an expensive
| fossil and succeeded.
|
| The representative from Sotheby's even says that they were
| involved from day 1:
|
| > "This is the first time a specimen has been auctioned where
| we've been working together from the time it was excavated,"
| she said. "This is the most transparent sale of a dinosaur to
| have ever occurred."
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