Saving A Dinosaur: Our approach to funding research and protecting fossils
Artist impression of what the new opalised dinosaur may have looked like. Artist: James McKinnon
Adjunct Associate Professor Paul Willis, Flinders University
Jenni Brammall, Australian Opal Centre
Today we announced that Palaeo Pictures had acquired the opalised bones of a small dinosaur. You may well ask why a video production company wants to get into owning fossils! It’s a long and complex story that comes down to finding a new way to secure these unique pieces of our natural heritage and to fund their preparation and study. At stake is the future of uniquely Australian fossils and the science that delivers our understanding of them. So where to start this long and entangled story? Let’s begin with what we have actually done.
Opalised Fossils
Palaeo Pictures CEO Associate Professor Paul Willis announced today that his video production company had secured the opalised fossils of a small dinosaur from Lightning Ridge in outback NSW, ultimately for donation to a public museum. The fossils were found by two opal miners while they searched for opal.
Not much can be said yet about the dinosaur itself; most of the bones are still entombed in a white sandstone so we can’t tell how much of the skeleton is there, or what species of dinosaur it represents. From what can be seen though, the bones appear to be from a small plant-eating dinosaur and, from geological research and other fossils recovered from the area, we can say that it lived 100 million years ago in forests not far from an inland sea.
Opalised fossils of a huge variety of animals and plants have been recovered from Australia’s outback opal fields for more than 100 years. During the last year we’ve seen the announcement of two new species of dinosaur from opal mines, Weewarrasaurus and Fostoria, both from the Lightning Ridge opal fields; and the ‘rediscovery’, on an online auction site, of an opalised toe bone of the dinosaur Kakuru, originally discovered at Coober Pedy in South Australia. In recent years, new fossil species have been coming thick and fast from the collection of the Australian Opal Centre. In the early 1990s there was the celebrated case of Eric the Opalised Plesiosaur, the almost complete skeleton of a small marine reptile (now known as Umoonasaurus) from Coober Pedy; and in the 1980s, the discovery of a spectacular opalised Steropodon jaw from Lightning Ridge made international headlines as Australia’s first mammal fossil from the age of dinosaurs.
The ‘Double’ Value of Opal Fossils
While opals are found elsewhere, Australia is regarded as the world’s leading source of gem-quality opal. Opal is among our most prized gemstones; indeed, it is Australia’s National Gemstone. Even more rare are opalised fossils – the opalised shells, bones, teeth and other remains of once-living plants and animals. While opalised fossil shells are regarded as relatively common by opal miners, globally, they are rare. Opalised fossil teeth and bones – from dinosaurs and the animals that lived alongside them – are unique to Australia. The extreme rarity of opalised fossil bones and teeth, and the enormous amount of scientific information they can yield, renders them of immense scientific value. Several species of dinosaur, mammal and other vertebrates are only known from single specimens of opalised fossils; and so far, all opalised animal fossils found in Australia are the only examples of their kind known in the world. The scientific information they yield is changing our understanding of the evolution of life on this continent.
Photo: J. Brammall / Australian Opal Centre
Precious opal content compounds the value of opalised fossils. The majority of opalised fossils are composed of common opal (also called potch), which lacks the famed spectral colours of precious opal and is of little inherent monetary value. But among the potch is sometimes the famous fire of precious opal, called ‘play of colour’. In some rare cases, a whole fossil can be composed of precious opal. It’s for precious opal that opal miners dig, work and yearn; it’s how they make their money.
So, there can be at least two values attached to an opalised fossil: an incalculable scientific value and the monetary value of its precious opal content. Not to mention desirability as a collectible item, and value as a rare item of uniquely Australian natural and cultural heritage.
Protection of Opal Fossils
Because opalised fossils are (with rare exceptions) unique to Australia, they are specifically listed as items under the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage (PMCH) act. This act does as it says: it protects Australia’s heritage of movable cultural objects which are important for ethnological, archaeological, historical, literary, artistic, scientific or technological reasons. It means that nominated items (and that includes opalised fossils) cannot be exported without a permit. And the chances of getting a permit to export treasured opalised fossil bones are next to zero.
A Miner’s Dilemma
An Australian opal miner with a legal mining permit owns the opal, precious or otherwise, that come out of his or her mine. If that opal happens to be a fossil, that’s a bonus for the miner – they become the owner of an opalised fossil.
But a miner owning an opalised fossil is faced with an awkward set of decisions. Despite there being a lucrative market in fossils internationally, particularly for dinosaurs and other fossil skeletons, bones or teeth, the PMCH act will not allow them to legally export the fossil. There are few collectors within Australia willing to pay international market prices for opalised bones and skeletons. Furthermore, the trade is not popular with scientists; once a fossil disappears into private hands, in most cases it is effectively lost to science and to the Australian people.
Many opal miners believe that the fossils they find best belong in museums, to be cared for, displayed and shared with future generations of Australians. However, few miners can afford to simply give them away – they have to make some return on their hours of toil deep underground and the costs of fuel, machinery, parts, maintenance and government fees. Opal is difficult to find; a miner may work for months, or years, without finding opal sufficient to cover costs, let alone ‘strike it rich’. And museums rarely have funds on hand adequate to fairly remunerate miners in return for their fossils.
This opal miner’s dilemma is compounded by precious opal within the specimen. For some miners, the easiest solution to that predicament is to break up the fossil and sell it for its opal content. Once its identity as a fossil is destroyed, the opal can more readily be exported, but the fossil – with its rarity, beauty and potential to reveal secrets about Australia’s past and identity – is lost forever. The monetary value of fossils preserved in precious opal puts them even further out of the reach of cash-strapped museums. The Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, which offers tax incentives to encourage donations of cultural items to Australian public collections, has enabled important opalised fossils to reach public museum collections; but many opal miners earn too little to be able to benefit from this program.
Solving One Riddle…
For more than 20 years, palaeontologists Dr Elizabeth Smith and Jenni Brammall have worked with opal miners who find fossils at Lightning Ridge. The Australian Opal Centre began building its public collection at Lightning Ridge in 2005, under the guidance of Brammall and Smith, then collaborating with other researchers and sharing information about the fossils through displays, publications and events. Awareness of the fossils’ significance has increased both locally and throughout the palaeontological and general communities.
With increasing awareness, more opal miners in NSW, South Australia and Queensland are recognising opalised fossils found incidentally while at work in their mines, and are taking care to recover and preserve them. Many have a sense of wonder and privilege on making these discoveries. More miners than in the past realise the scientific and cultural significance of opalised fossils, and some are working with the Australian Opal Centre looking for ways for their opalised fossils to end up in the Centre’s public collection, there to be kept safe, shown and shared with others in perpetuity.
But saving opalised fossils from being ground to dust on a lapidary wheel, or exported from the country illegally, is only the first step in realising their full significance. Painstaking work may be required to fully reveal the fossil; and all too often, bones must reassembled after being damaged by mining machinery, and clues extracted from fragmentary remains. Then unlocking the fossils’ secrets requires detailed study by palaeontologists, comparing the bones, teeth or shells with those of all other known related animals, to determine what the original animal was, how it lived and died and what role it played in its long-lost world. Meticulous preparation and careful study also requires funding; and palaeontology is the Cinderella of the sciences; while it attracts disproportionate public interest, traditional funding sources favour other sciences.
A New Approach
Why is Palaeo Pictures stepping in to secure opalised dinosaur fossils? It’s not so much a new approach to funding science as one borrowed from a much older organisation, the National Geographic Society. Essentially, National Geographic generates an income from the sale of its magazines, documentaries and other presentations of research conducted around the world. Profits from this business are distributed to researchers by grants, so they can go out and conduct interesting research that National Geographic can then cover in articles in their cross-media empire. It’s a fertile cycle of research funding supported by research communication, and that’s what Palaeo Pictures wants to emulate.
By renumerating the miners for the fossils, and guaranteeing that the fossils will be donated to the Australian people in safekeeping at the Australian Opal Centre, Palaeo Pictures has secured the worthy subject of a documentary. And, because it’s making a documentary, Palaeo Pictures can reach out and invite an audience to contribute money to enable the skilled work required to bring this little dinosaur back to life, then share in the outcomes.
For this approach to funding palaeontological research to flourish in Australia, Palaeo Pictures needs to work closely with public museums such as the Australian Opal Centre. It also works with the Australian Palaeontological Research Institute (APRI), a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to raising funds for the protection of Australia’s fossil heritage, supporting the science of palaeontology and promoting public awareness of palaeontological issues. All that’s needed now – urgently – are members of the public to dig deep and become part of the quest to save and share an endangered and globally unique fossil heritage.
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