As a, now retired and ex-amateur, fossil hunter who has donated hundreds of specimens to British museums, including the British Museum, Natural History Museum and the Lapworth Museum, I cannot say that I'm impressed with the amateur / professional relationship in the UK. For example, I took a 450,000 year old Clactonian flint tool, together with a struck and retouched lithic (rhyolite - Charnwood Forest) plus a tool with multiple old fractures from a single point of percussion suggesting it was employed as a striking tool (I'd suggest indicative of it being such), all from a new Midlands locality into into the B.M. for identification. The post-Anglian Glacial deposition date suggested manufacture by Homo heidelbergensis. Despite promises, I have heard absolutely nothing back. The artefacts have disappeared. As a boy I had a complete and perfect specimen of the trilobite Dalmanites myops, upside down with hypostome intact, irretrievably catalogued into the Natural History collection without my permission when I had simply taken it in to advise them and they told me they wanted to study it. I had a very large bird vertebrae from Sheppey (Dasornis sp?) and a completely new and unique species of crab, the first ever found from the Beltinge Fish Bed, simply disappear in the Natural History Museum. I donated a complete collection of fossil fish skulls (+150), plus bird, crocodile and snake fossils, plus chalk Cretaceous ammonites to the Lapworth Museum. They told me I would be invited to the opening of the new gallery and that they would keep me informed of research. Did I hear a word? Have I heard a word? No. The Natural History Museum has the largest specimens of London Clay eel skull, the lobster Homaris sp., massive leather back turtle specimens (Eosphargis gigas) and a Cretaceous ammonite (name forgotten) plus a unique jaw fragment of Hyracotherium (only the 2nd. specimen ever found in Sheppey in 400 years of collecting) through my donations. The jaw excepted, I heard nothing in return. "Thanks. Now cheerio and (polite version) good-bye." I could have been like one amateur I knew who, with my help some 30 years ago, found and retrieved an intact baby plesiosuar with head attached on a Jurassic slab in Somerset but who sold it on the market to a German dentist (unprepped) for £20,000. He gave me nothing but did take some Sheppey crabs I'd collected, that he said he liked, but only to sell in his shop. I'm sad to say it but neither he nor the UK professional palaeontologists appear to have much integrity. They are deceitful and I wouldn't trust any of them. It's a big disappointment and I haven't even begun on the utter shambles that is Scottish academia.... but that's yet another tale.
That sounds awful, sounds like they don't have the respect to take you seriously. Honestly, they're hindering new discoveries for the whole community by acting like that
I can only echo what you are saying John, the attitude of some academics and institutions towards 'amateurs' stinks here in the UK, especially now access to inland exposures is becoming more restricted, with 'invite only' groups forming and access denied to 'non members'. Personally I too have had the same issues with these people, important scientific finds I have made and donated to one local Museum are now no longer accessible and my requests to view them and are they being properly curated, fall on deaf ears. Then you have those people in academia I would have once called friends, but proven to be very dishonest, and have air-brushed me out of major discoveries, or 'lost' long term loans to Institutions for study, only for the records to show they had been 'returned' to my safe keeping, so where are they ????? Ah yes, the shambles that is Scottish academia, where do we begin ?!
You crushed it with this video! People often forget that the majority of the specimens of the first known feathered dinosaur, Archaeopteryx, were found by limestone quarry workers. Probably the only important thing that you didn't mention is the vital importance of providing good locality data and a LABEL with that data for each specimen. I will post more about that later.
Thanks for watching everyone! And thanks Nic for taking the time to chat to me! Follow Nic on Twitter for some cool fossil content: twitter.com/nic_rawlence_nz If you're after some more fossil content, check out my patreon channel: www.patreon.com/mamlambo
I think this is a great topic to cover and it can be in general applied to other regions of the world. I appreciate the ethical coverage as well, not to many people think about that in the fossil hunting/rockhounding communities.
Thanks so much! Yeah, if we don't collect rocks, fossils and minerals ethically or destroy archeological sites, we might find ourselves unable to do so anymore as laws will get tightened. Never mind the fact that we could damage something important!
Just the other day while visiting the temple of Posiedon in Sounion, Greece, while on study abroad, I found a piece of ancient pottery on the nearby cliff. I made sure to take many photos and a video of the location that I found it before turning it in to the proper authorities.
Thinking no matter who you are. It would be an absolute honor if a museum would want a fossil that someone found. Large scale to share with those involved in the collection of rare fossils. Wow!
That was a fantastic video. So much great info. Keep doing this type of video every once in a while because things are forever changing in the laws and were you can go. Be blessed.
Would give this video four thumbs up, if I could. Wonderful format and excellent information! Wish someone would put together similar for other countries, too.
What a fascinating and important interview. Absolutely packed with clear answers to vital questions for anyone interested in fossil hunting in New Zealand. I also enjoyed your evident delight in participating in the exchange. Thank you both!
This was fascinating! I'm super pleased to learn that middens are protected completely there, and with them, all the history with them. Yay for ethical collecting, and thanks :)
Thanks, this was very interesting. It's good to see the relationship between amateur (and professional) collectors and museums, as far as donating specimens.
Thank you for this very informative episode. I'm loving your channel, am 70 years old and looking for a hobby. I love the discovery aspect of what you do, it must be very satisfying.
Fascinating that amatures are well respected as a Source of fossils & locations to hunt.. Thanks for the Rules on Collecting & sending them. Very enlightening..
It’s really cool how museums and archeologists are so open to cooperation with amateur and private fossil hunters. I think if they had gone the other direction with it, a lot more privately found fossils would never be seen or properly documented by professionals. It’s also very very cool how they are not only working out prehistoric environments and using the info to help our modern world. Very noble work. I also think that you have approached your fossil hunting and prepping work very much like a professional. I know you have always been very conscious of regulations and sought information and advice whenever there was a question of how to proceed. Not sure what exactly determines if someone is a professional or not. Probably some letters on a piece of paper. In my book, your work ranks right up there with the best. Thanks for the informative video. I’m in the US, but I think the rules here are likely to be fairly similar here. Just more likely to involve raptors and sauropods, rather than penguins and plesiosaurs. work.
Thanks Valiant! I've always erred on the side of leaving something alone if I was unsure about the ethics or whether I can remove it without damaging it. One day I'll find that raptor 😂
Very informative for both commonwealth countries and not on the ethics of fossil hunting/collecting and viewpoint on it from professional palaeontologists. Keep uploading bangers like this!
A very useful video especially describing the laws and ethics around collecting fossils. Thank you for sharing such a great contents Morne. My 8 years old daughter is very interested about paleontology for past couple of years. She was very excited to see the paleontology exhibits at Te Papa this summer. I accidently found one of your fossil crab prep videos today and showed that to her. She really got inspired and wanted to explore right away. I took her to the Auckland city library to find more information on New Zealand's fossil sites and just now after seeing this video from your channel I realized that we have found both the books. Now she is really keen on visiting the sites, starting from the sites nearby. I glanced through the books and apparently the shores north to the Christchurch is the best and probably the easiest area for her to find a small fossil crab so we can air scribe. It's bit far away but I will need to take her to that area at some point in the future. Thanks again for great videos. Keep up your good work!!!
Thanks Morne'. Thats very useful knowledge that can be used all over the world as far as legal and illegal fossil collecting. This is specifically talking about vertebrate fossils and not invertebrate fossils. Every country is going to be different but they will all have laws concerning vertebrate fossil collecting, selling, and shipping out of the country or even the state. Thank you for having a professional explain the different laws to us.
Glad I found this video. I have always wondered what was considered appropriate by the experts when it comes to fossil collecting. I live in Northern California, USA. When I was a kid there was a big open field behind our backyard. It was owned by a wonderful family. The son built houses and at the time (early 1960s) used sandstone for decorative siding. He would dump the little bit of leftover rock in the field. His son and I played around the piles and found many carbon fossils and I still have a large slab with an embedded fish skeleton. Clearly we had no idea if the original source but my friend and I spent many summer days looking for that elusive T-Rex. 😂😂😂
@@MamlamboFossils no but I had fun looking. It was a joyful childhood. My parents encourage investigating new things. Dad was an aeronautical engineer and mom an artist. I am reliving those days watching all your videos. Thank you!
Folks, I am not a trained scientist. But I have collected fossils as an amateur for over 30 years and I have collaborated with geologists and paleontologists on various research projects. I used to volunteer at a university in Texas as a lab assistant, and I can not even begin to convey just how important good provenance is to the scientific value of a fossil. Scientists will often measure the value of a fossil by the information that it can provide to humanity, rather than the other typical measurements such as sale value, beauty, etc..... Provenance is insanely important for many reasons, because good provenance allows scientists to determine where a fossil is in relation to its surroundings, and thus whether or not it's something to be really excited about. For example, there's a fabulous locality called "Tanis" here in North America. This is one of the few known terrestrial cretaceous localities on our entire planet was deposited within a few hours of the dinosaur killer asteroid hitting, and the only one that is hypothesized to contain pieces of that asteroid. Had fossils from that locality shown up at a museum with "somewhere in South Dakota" as locality info, the site could have been lost to science. In stead, the amateur fossil hunter who found the locality took a paleontologist out to the site.
On local restrictions: the best trace fossil in my collection is on a massive slab I carried off a headland where the local council has since banned collecting because people were taking rocks for their aquariums. If I didn't take it it would have been washed away. I actually got permission to collect there following a major rockfall and recovered several nice plant fossils and trace fossils all of which were in the process of breaking up and being washed away by the tide so there is an issue with outright bans on collections. I know of at least one site which is basically acres of Permian she'll bed 10s of metres thick. Not in need of protection but the locals didn't like fossil collecting tourists using the beach parking and argued wrongly of course that it was damaging tourism. While collecting I"be found previously unknown sites and donated a range of specimens to museums with the needed locality information. Ii have also donated significant finds to museums rather than keep them. I also use morphosource to download and print 3D files of fossils for education purposes. The only bad experience I had was with some unusual garnet xenoliths I have to a university with the intention of being involved in their preparation and study. They quickly disappeared into their collection with no acknowledgement they even had them. Their loss because I had other material I was planning to donate.
Sounds like you've got the right attitude! It's all about building relationships, and the museum that took the xenoliths probably learnt that in the end when you never came back with other specimens!
Great interview. Here's a few more questions for him. What about vacationers who would like to fossil hunt? Do they need permits? What are they allowed to take home (if not a protected item). Does the item need documented evidence that it's not a protected / important item? Just some thoughts. That would be my dream vacation!
Yeah, you would need permits to export them from New Zealand. It's an online process. This is to stop important specimens being lost like they did in the past
*Great Interview; Thank you Both!* To be an Expert, first involves searching for TRUTH. By just the reach of One's Hand, it's possible to Open so many Doors. _sparing my rambling,_ - did make note: via: Book, You found "New Places" to look. Awesome, How Exciting! *Cheers!*
@@MamlamboFossils Not that I could see unfortunately. Its listed on GNS Online Shop but out of stock and I couldnt see a link for pdf version. Hope Im wrong
looking for conformation i did the right thing in this situation. during a trip to tawharanui peninsula, around a week after gabrielle. I found a very degraded Moa TMT under the high tide mark i collected it after looking for nearby midden and while i couldn't find any along the surrounding beach there were around 500m away, much higher up the banks. I collected it as if not it would've undoubtedly been lost to the sea. Was this the right call? it was my opinion that it likely was exposed by the storm and fell/rolled down to the beach from the steep banks behind it. I tried contacting the museum but heard no response. It is arguably rare to find moa bones, even TMT with auckland so it seemed strange they didn't want it.
Hiya Denny, contacting the museum was the right thing to do. If you send me a photo of the bone I can put you in touch with someone I know interested in Moa bones. Sounds like that bone was going to get lost in the sea. My email is mamlambofossils@gmail.com
Interesting debate on how you operate in New Zealand. It seems largely similar to how we operate in the U.K. Some of us in the amataur collecting sphere in the U.K. have anxieties around how we can donate some of these fossils to a museum when we pass on. Many of us older collectors have specimens we would like to see in a museum collection. However it seems that new legislation emerging requires the museums to only accept a specimen if it can be proved that the owner has given the collector permission to collect. Many of these collection sites were old abandoned quarries and were essentially commercially abandoned. If you could find someone to talk to certainly in Scotland it might be a sheep farmer, he might own or rent the land but generally would shrug his shoulders and leave you too it. Could New Zealand legislation offer us Brit collectors perhaps a caveat that we might somehow get promoted in the U.K so these fossils can be available for scientific and general public viewing. Otherwise they will after our demise be either skipped or sold to the highest bidder and often we collectors don't want commercial disposal we want them in a museum where they rightfully belong.
Thanks Alan! I would suggest finding a keen paleontologist to work with to get your collection into the right hands, I think the new generation of experts have a more accepting view 😀
Hey, Morne. What is your understanding of access to roadcuts? There is a site where a nearby land owner verbally abuses anyone who fossicks, claiming it is their property. The area is prone to constant erosion, and it makes me weep to consider how many brilliant fossils are crumbling away uncollected.
When citizen science and paleontology meet in one video I'm very pleased.😊I live in a coastal location and it sits on top of an exposed Miocene deposit, formed at 1500 ft sea floor 20mya. I find whales, dolphin, shark bones. Laws in my area are strict and you can't remove them without a permit. I find all these bones on an obscure beach and there's nothing I can do but turn them over to the sea to erode.😢
I've seen similar situations when specimens are found on Native American reservation land as opposed to other parts of the US, as reservation land is technically a country of it's own, despite being within the continental United States. I forget which state, but a few years back there was an amazing find, in which a very well preserved mammoth skull with both tusks still attached had been discovered on a reservation and by tribal law, could not be removed. When last I heard, the guys that discovered the mammoth were in negotiations with the indigenous government in a permit type process to retrieve the specimen from the First Nation's land.
My personal feeling is that, if I discover something that the museum or the university really wants, then I want them to have it. As long as they ask nicely ;)
Here in America we use an AK-47 instead of a hammer for fossil hunting, rocks split real quick! Unfortunately all the fossils we unearth are shattered for some weird reason.
A large proportion of new fossil species are found by amateurs, so it makes sense to work with people that can ID them. It's like crowd sourcing research 😃
@@MamlamboFossils It was. I might have had a picture at one point, but separations... 4 matching clovis points were "lost" by the step daughter in the Phoenix fire after their no recovery policies.
![Plesiosaur fossil find and prep: looking for some dinosaur age fossils [prep included!]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ta3iqHGmFZE/mqdefault.jpg)
![Plesiosaur fossil find and prep: looking for some dinosaur age fossils [prep included!]](/img/tr.png)
As a, now retired and ex-amateur, fossil hunter who has donated hundreds of specimens to British museums, including the British Museum, Natural History Museum and the Lapworth Museum, I cannot say that I'm impressed with the amateur / professional relationship in the UK. For example, I took a 450,000 year old Clactonian flint tool, together with a struck and retouched lithic (rhyolite - Charnwood Forest) plus a tool with multiple old fractures from a single point of percussion suggesting it was employed as a striking tool (I'd suggest indicative of it being such), all from a new Midlands locality into into the B.M. for identification. The post-Anglian Glacial deposition date suggested manufacture by Homo heidelbergensis. Despite promises, I have heard absolutely nothing back. The artefacts have disappeared. As a boy I had a complete and perfect specimen of the trilobite Dalmanites myops, upside down with hypostome intact, irretrievably catalogued into the Natural History collection without my permission when I had simply taken it in to advise them and they told me they wanted to study it. I had a very large bird vertebrae from Sheppey (Dasornis sp?) and a completely new and unique species of crab, the first ever found from the Beltinge Fish Bed, simply disappear in the Natural History Museum. I donated a complete collection of fossil fish skulls (+150), plus bird, crocodile and snake fossils, plus chalk Cretaceous ammonites to the Lapworth Museum. They told me I would be invited to the opening of the new gallery and that they would keep me informed of research. Did I hear a word? Have I heard a word? No. The Natural History Museum has the largest specimens of London Clay eel skull, the lobster Homaris sp., massive leather back turtle specimens (Eosphargis gigas) and a Cretaceous ammonite (name forgotten) plus a unique jaw fragment of Hyracotherium (only the 2nd. specimen ever found in Sheppey in 400 years of collecting) through my donations. The jaw excepted, I heard nothing in return. "Thanks. Now cheerio and (polite version) good-bye." I could have been like one amateur I knew who, with my help some 30 years ago, found and retrieved an intact baby plesiosuar with head attached on a Jurassic slab in Somerset but who sold it on the market to a German dentist (unprepped) for £20,000. He gave me nothing but did take some Sheppey crabs I'd collected, that he said he liked, but only to sell in his shop. I'm sad to say it but neither he nor the UK professional palaeontologists appear to have much integrity. They are deceitful and I wouldn't trust any of them. It's a big disappointment and I haven't even begun on the utter shambles that is Scottish academia.... but that's yet another tale.
That sounds awful, sounds like they don't have the respect to take you seriously. Honestly, they're hindering new discoveries for the whole community by acting like that
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience, thankfully the scientists these days are much more approachable and work with the community.
I can only echo what you are saying John, the attitude of some academics and institutions towards 'amateurs' stinks here in the UK, especially now access to inland exposures is becoming more restricted, with 'invite only' groups forming and access denied to 'non members'. Personally I too have had the same issues with these people, important scientific finds I have made and donated to one local Museum are now no longer accessible and my requests to view them and are they being properly curated, fall on deaf ears. Then you have those people in academia I would have once called friends, but proven to be very dishonest, and have air-brushed me out of major discoveries, or 'lost' long term loans to Institutions for study, only for the records to show they had been 'returned' to my safe keeping, so where are they ????? Ah yes, the shambles that is Scottish academia, where do we begin ?!
The specific rules vary *enormously* in different countries, and from state/province (or even county/district) within each country as well.
You crushed it with this video! People often forget that the majority of the specimens of the first known feathered dinosaur, Archaeopteryx, were found by limestone quarry workers. Probably the only important thing that you didn't mention is the vital importance of providing good locality data and a LABEL with that data for each specimen. I will post more about that later.
Very true! I'll add that into a upcoming video!
Thanks for watching everyone! And thanks Nic for taking the time to chat to me! Follow Nic on Twitter for some cool fossil content: twitter.com/nic_rawlence_nz
If you're after some more fossil content, check out my patreon channel: www.patreon.com/mamlambo
I will. Thanks Nic.
As an amateur fossil hunter who is thinking about moving to NZ, I am very grateful that you made this video!
I think this is a great topic to cover and it can be in general applied to other regions of the world. I appreciate the ethical coverage as well, not to many people think about that in the fossil hunting/rockhounding communities.
Thanks so much! Yeah, if we don't collect rocks, fossils and minerals ethically or destroy archeological sites, we might find ourselves unable to do so anymore as laws will get tightened. Never mind the fact that we could damage something important!
Just the other day while visiting the temple of Posiedon in Sounion, Greece, while on study abroad, I found a piece of ancient pottery on the nearby cliff. I made sure to take many photos and a video of the location that I found it before turning it in to the proper authorities.
@@TylerDollarhide that's awesome!! I'm sure the appreciated your honesty!
Thinking no matter who you are. It would be an absolute honor if a museum would want a fossil that someone found. Large scale to share with those involved in the collection of rare fossils. Wow!
@@dba750 ???
That was a fantastic video. So much great info. Keep doing this type of video every once in a while because things are forever changing in the laws and were you can go. Be blessed.
We're lucky here in New Zealand that we have such a large coastline. You could explore it your whole live and never run out of new spots
Would give this video four thumbs up, if I could. Wonderful format and excellent information! Wish someone would put together similar for other countries, too.
Thanks so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
What a fascinating and important interview. Absolutely packed with clear answers to vital questions for anyone interested in fossil hunting in New Zealand. I also enjoyed your evident delight in participating in the exchange. Thank you both!
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
This was fascinating! I'm super pleased to learn that middens are protected completely there, and with them, all the history with them. Yay for ethical collecting, and thanks :)
Thanks, this was very interesting. It's good to see the relationship between amateur (and professional) collectors and museums, as far as donating specimens.
I'm glad you enjoyed it, I've found professional paleontologist and amateurs share the same passion, exploring and discovering new things!
Awesome to see Nic on here. Top man he is
He really is!
Thank you for this very informative episode. I'm loving your channel, am 70 years old and looking for a hobby. I love the discovery aspect of what you do, it must be very satisfying.
It's really awesome! I enjoy the finding in the field as much as the researching and prepping!
Fascinating that amatures are well respected as a Source of fossils & locations to hunt.. Thanks for the Rules on Collecting & sending them. Very enlightening..
Glad you enjoyed it!
It’s really cool how museums and archeologists are so open to cooperation with amateur and private fossil hunters. I think if they had gone the other direction with it, a lot more privately found fossils would never be seen or properly documented by professionals.
It’s also very very cool how they are not only working out prehistoric environments and using the info to help our modern world. Very noble work.
I also think that you have approached your fossil hunting and prepping work very much like a professional. I know you have always been very conscious of regulations and sought information and advice whenever there was a question of how to proceed. Not sure what exactly determines if someone is a professional or not. Probably some letters on a piece of paper.
In my book, your work ranks right up there with the best.
Thanks for the informative video. I’m in the US, but I think the rules here are likely to be fairly similar here. Just more likely to involve raptors and sauropods, rather than penguins and plesiosaurs.
work.
Thanks Valiant! I've always erred on the side of leaving something alone if I was unsure about the ethics or whether I can remove it without damaging it. One day I'll find that raptor 😂
@@MamlamboFossils I don’t doubt that one bit, sir. Hopefully they name it after you. 😁
Really great video!
Nic brings a great amount of knowledge in!
I'm glad you enjoyed it Henry! Nic has such good information to share!
Nice resource for locating fossils.
Thanks bro!
Very informative for both commonwealth countries and not on the ethics of fossil hunting/collecting and viewpoint on it from professional palaeontologists. Keep uploading bangers like this!
Thanks!! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
A very useful video especially describing the laws and ethics around collecting fossils. Thank you for sharing such a great contents Morne.
My 8 years old daughter is very interested about paleontology for past couple of years. She was very excited to see the paleontology exhibits at Te Papa this summer. I accidently found one of your fossil crab prep videos today and showed that to her. She really got inspired and wanted to explore right away. I took her to the Auckland city library to find more information on New Zealand's fossil sites and just now after seeing this video from your channel I realized that we have found both the books. Now she is really keen on visiting the sites, starting from the sites nearby.
I glanced through the books and apparently the shores north to the Christchurch is the best and probably the easiest area for her to find a small fossil crab so we can air scribe. It's bit far away but I will need to take her to that area at some point in the future.
Thanks again for great videos. Keep up your good work!!!
That's awesome that she is getting into the fossils! Email me with your postal address mamlambo82@gmail.com and I can send you a fossil crab 😀
Thanks Morne'. Thats very useful knowledge that can be used all over the world as far as legal and illegal fossil collecting. This is specifically talking about vertebrate fossils and not invertebrate fossils. Every country is going to be different but they will all have laws concerning vertebrate fossil collecting, selling, and shipping out of the country or even the state. Thank you for having a professional explain the different laws to us.
My pleasure!! I'm glad you enjoyed it!!
This was an awesome video with great content and some of the pictures were outstanding thank you my friend six stars
Thanks so much Joseph! I appreciate your support!
Great collaboration!!
Thanks so much Rick!
Glad I found this video. I have always wondered what was considered appropriate by the experts when it comes to fossil collecting. I live in Northern California, USA. When I was a kid there was a big open field behind our backyard. It was owned by a wonderful family. The son built houses and at the time (early 1960s) used sandstone for decorative siding. He would dump the little bit of leftover rock in the field. His son and I played around the piles and found many carbon fossils and I still have a large slab with an embedded fish skeleton. Clearly we had no idea if the original source but my friend and I spent many summer days looking for that elusive T-Rex. 😂😂😂
Oooh that sounds like such a cool place to look for fossils! DId you find any shark teeth in there?
@@MamlamboFossils no but I had fun looking. It was a joyful childhood. My parents encourage investigating new things. Dad was an aeronautical engineer and mom an artist. I am reliving those days watching all your videos. Thank you!
Really interesting convo, nice work.
Thanks!
Folks, I am not a trained scientist. But I have collected fossils as an amateur for over 30 years and I have collaborated with geologists and paleontologists on various research projects. I used to volunteer at a university in Texas as a lab assistant, and I can not even begin to convey just how important good provenance is to the scientific value of a fossil. Scientists will often measure the value of a fossil by the information that it can provide to humanity, rather than the other typical measurements such as sale value, beauty, etc.....
Provenance is insanely important for many reasons, because good provenance allows scientists to determine where a fossil is in relation to its surroundings, and thus whether or not it's something to be really excited about. For example, there's a fabulous locality called "Tanis" here in North America. This is one of the few known terrestrial cretaceous localities on our entire planet was deposited within a few hours of the dinosaur killer asteroid hitting, and the only one that is hypothesized to contain pieces of that asteroid. Had fossils from that locality shown up at a museum with "somewhere in South Dakota" as locality info, the site could have been lost to science. In stead, the amateur fossil hunter who found the locality took a paleontologist out to the site.
Really well said! Thanks Jonathan, I appreciate this comment so much!
I'm gonna start collecting books on fossil hunting in different places. Thanks for the informative video.
Great idea!!
Thank you. That was very interesting and informative.
Glad you enjoyed it!
This was super interesting, thank you!
You're so welcome!
very informative many thanks !
Glad it was helpful!
That was really interesting. Happy Christmas, however you choose to spend it.
Best Wishes, Brendan.
Thanks, you too!
On local restrictions: the best trace fossil in my collection is on a massive slab I carried off a headland where the local council has since banned collecting because people were taking rocks for their aquariums. If I didn't take it it would have been washed away. I actually got permission to collect there following a major rockfall and recovered several nice plant fossils and trace fossils all of which were in the process of breaking up and being washed away by the tide so there is an issue with outright bans on collections. I know of at least one site which is basically acres of Permian she'll bed 10s of metres thick. Not in need of protection but the locals didn't like fossil collecting tourists using the beach parking and argued wrongly of course that it was damaging tourism. While collecting I"be found previously unknown sites and donated a range of specimens to museums with the needed locality information. Ii have also donated significant finds to museums rather than keep them. I also use morphosource to download and print 3D files of fossils for education purposes. The only bad experience I had was with some unusual garnet xenoliths I have to a university with the intention of being involved in their preparation and study. They quickly disappeared into their collection with no acknowledgement they even had them. Their loss because I had other material I was planning to donate.
Sounds like you've got the right attitude! It's all about building relationships, and the museum that took the xenoliths probably learnt that in the end when you never came back with other specimens!
@@MamlamboFossils it wasn't a museum. It was a uni I was a Masters student at.
@@garydargan6 most institutions have "ownership" rules over all staff and student finds and discoveries. Sad but universal.
Hi everyone
Hi Rafal!
@@MamlamboFossils interesting video
Fantastic video.
Thanks so much Moto! 😀
Great interview. Here's a few more questions for him. What about vacationers who would like to fossil hunt? Do they need permits? What are they allowed to take home (if not a protected item). Does the item need documented evidence that it's not a protected / important item? Just some thoughts. That would be my dream vacation!
Yeah, you would need permits to export them from New Zealand. It's an online process. This is to stop important specimens being lost like they did in the past
awesome ,...Thanks !
My pleasure!!
*Great Interview; Thank you Both!* To be an Expert, first involves searching for TRUTH.
By just the reach of One's Hand, it's possible to Open so many Doors.
_sparing my rambling,_ - did make note: via: Book, You found "New Places" to look.
Awesome, How Exciting! *Cheers!*
Thanks Karen! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Good insight. Thanks.
Glad it was helpful!
That "Kiwi Fossil Hunters Guidebook" is not available anywhere btw. Sold out, out of stock. No luck there.
I think you can still buy the PDF, or check TradeMe
@@MamlamboFossils Not that I could see unfortunately. Its listed on GNS Online Shop but out of stock and I couldnt see a link for pdf version. Hope Im wrong
looking for conformation i did the right thing in this situation. during a trip to tawharanui peninsula, around a week after gabrielle. I found a very degraded Moa TMT under the high tide mark i collected it after looking for nearby midden and while i couldn't find any along the surrounding beach there were around 500m away, much higher up the banks. I collected it as if not it would've undoubtedly been lost to the sea. Was this the right call? it was my opinion that it likely was exposed by the storm and fell/rolled down to the beach from the steep banks behind it. I tried contacting the museum but heard no response. It is arguably rare to find moa bones, even TMT with auckland so it seemed strange they didn't want it.
Hiya Denny, contacting the museum was the right thing to do. If you send me a photo of the bone I can put you in touch with someone I know interested in Moa bones. Sounds like that bone was going to get lost in the sea. My email is mamlambofossils@gmail.com
Interesting debate on how you operate in New Zealand. It seems largely similar to how we operate in the U.K. Some of us in the amataur collecting sphere in the U.K. have anxieties around how we can donate some of these fossils to a museum when we pass on. Many of us older collectors have specimens we would like to see in a museum collection. However it seems that new legislation emerging requires the museums to only accept a specimen if it can be proved that the owner has given the collector permission to collect. Many of these collection sites were old abandoned quarries and were essentially commercially abandoned. If you could find someone to talk to certainly in Scotland it might be a sheep farmer, he might own or rent the land but generally would shrug his shoulders and leave you too it. Could New Zealand legislation offer us Brit collectors perhaps a caveat that we might somehow get promoted in the U.K so these fossils can be available for scientific and general public viewing. Otherwise they will after our demise be either skipped or sold to the highest bidder and often we collectors don't want commercial disposal we want them in a museum where they rightfully belong.
Thanks Alan! I would suggest finding a keen paleontologist to work with to get your collection into the right hands, I think the new generation of experts have a more accepting view 😀
p.s. I'm glad amateur and professional relationships are better in New Zealand. As it should be.
Yeah, everyone is very approachable and helpful!
Hey, Morne. What is your understanding of access to roadcuts? There is a site where a nearby land owner verbally abuses anyone who fossicks, claiming it is their property. The area is prone to constant erosion, and it makes me weep to consider how many brilliant fossils are crumbling away uncollected.
Hi Hamish, unsure of that. I usually look at the walking maps website to see how far the roadway extends. Your local council will also know for sure
When citizen science and paleontology meet in one video I'm very pleased.😊I live in a coastal location and it sits on top of an exposed Miocene deposit, formed at 1500 ft sea floor 20mya. I find whales, dolphin, shark bones. Laws in my area are strict and you can't remove them without a permit. I find all these bones on an obscure beach and there's nothing I can do but turn them over to the sea to erode.😢
It might be worth trying to get a permit! It sounds like an incredible place!
I've seen similar situations when specimens are found on Native American reservation land as opposed to other parts of the US, as reservation land is technically a country of it's own, despite being within the continental United States. I forget which state, but a few years back there was an amazing find, in which a very well preserved mammoth skull with both tusks still attached had been discovered on a reservation and by tribal law, could not be removed. When last I heard, the guys that discovered the mammoth were in negotiations with the indigenous government in a permit type process to retrieve the specimen from the First Nation's land.
My personal feeling is that, if I discover something that the museum or the university really wants, then I want them to have it. As long as they ask nicely ;)
Same! Plus it gives me more space for more fossils 😂
The one thing you generally don't need for fossil hunting here in the UK is sun tan lotion.
I would probably still burn 😄
This doesn't quite help for northeast Texas and central Oklahoma. But still love your videos!
Glad you enjoyed it at least 😀
Don't you also use your Hammer as a scale item in your photographs
Yeah, that's a good point! I do often do that
Thought so. Love the channel keep it up
MAMLAMBO...................
Here in America we use an AK-47 instead of a hammer for fossil hunting, rocks split real quick! Unfortunately all the fossils we unearth are shattered for some weird reason.
😲
The bones have micro fractures. Of course, it makes total sense being the Tunguska type bombardment impacts that ended the Pleistocene
Fã 🇧🇷
Being someone who is fairly anti government, this all actually seems fairly reasonable all things considered.
A large proportion of new fossil species are found by amateurs, so it makes sense to work with people that can ID them. It's like crowd sourcing research 😃
is it mandatory to wear squares shirt?
100% yes!
New Zealand is the cradle of penguin kind.
For a tax breaks in America Most museums require YOU to find a buyer to give it to them outright.
I never heard another word of my broken and healed foot bone....we need to see guides of ID from the online stuff, not just what to be seen today.
That sounds like a very interesting find!
@@MamlamboFossils It was. I might have had a picture at one point, but separations... 4 matching clovis points were "lost" by the step daughter in the Phoenix fire after their no recovery policies.