CONTENTS
(1) Photomicrograph of fossil "mice" teeth
& captions.
(2) Photograph of Alan VanArsdale in 1990 &
captions.
(3) The Cuyama Valley Badlands and its trillion fossils.
(4) The back stabbing Dr. X: lose your childhood adulation
of paleontologists.
(5) Vague statutes, unenforced regulations
and overstepped authority. We win a motion.
(6) A National Research Council call for
sanity, but privilege and punishment prevail.
(7) The University of California Museum of Paleontology
puts museum politics ahead of science.
(8) The case is "settled" in year 2000. But did
the United States bargain in good faith?
(1) MICRO-PHOTOGRAPH OF FOSSIL "MICE" TEETH
Photo caption: Four fossil mice teeth are dwarfed by a penny. Alan VanArsdale, who found the fossils, is the target of a Federal law suit involving similar fossils donated to a San Bernardino museum in 1993.
Information: The above specimens are from the family Heteromyidae (pocket mice) and are about 15 million years old (Miocene). They were found in sedimentary rock collected in the Caliente Mountains in San Luis Obispo County, California. The sedimentary rock was taken home, broken down and washed to produce a sand grain sized concentrate. This concentrate was then "picked" by laboriously searching through it several grains at a time, usually with optical magnification.
(2) PHOTOGRAPH OF ALAN VANARSDALE IN 1990
Photo caption: Alan VanArsdale and his dog Shadow, Goleta, 1990. Alan donated thousands of tiny fossils to a San Bernardino museum that solicited them in 1993. Ever since he has been the target of Federal litigation and a boycott of his collection by other museums. No criminal charges were ever filed.
Information: This photo was taken in 1990, when Alan was active in collecting micro-vertebrate fossils in the Cuyama Valley and Caliente Mountains, south of Taft, California. He collected sedimentary rock samples in the field using only a rock hammer, and accompanied only by his dog. These samples were brought home, broken down, washed, screened and then "picked" laboriously using a magnifier. In this way Alan recovered tens of thousands of diagnostic micro-vertebrate specimens. Most of these were donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, or later to the San Bernardino Museum in 1993. For years of collecting and library research Alan received a few hundred dollars in consulting fees from the Los Angeles County Museum, a small tax deduction for a 1989 donation to them, and a summer grant from UCSB. Thus his work was, essentially, volunteer. His success in the field and working too cheap did not go unnoticed. California museums may charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for collecting much fewer specimens (often just micro-vertebrates!) under a California compulsory "salvage" policy imposed upon contractors and government agencies at construction sites where fossils are found. Personnel from institutions involved in this lucrative salvage industry took the lead in trying to get Federal agencies and the Justice Department to treat Alan as a criminal.
(3) The Cuyama Valley Badlands and its trillion fossils.
About 30 miles north of Ojai, California Highway 33 passes by the summit of Pine Mountain and begins a steep descent to the Cuyama Valley. There are many view points where you can pull over and view in awe the vast landscape stretching out below to the north along the course of the usually dry Cuyama River. Badland canyons join the river from the east, and one can see the barren Caliente Mountains 25 miles north. The scene is so quiet and motionless that it seems like a painting.
Exposed in the canyons, the distant Caliente mountains and in the Lockwood valley to the east are hundreds of square miles of reddish sediments, most of which are called by geologist the Caliente Formation. Even at their thinnest, they are over a thousand feet thick from top to bottom, and were deposited from 20 to 10 million years ago in fresh water (hence "terrestrial"). Alan also discovered a few rodent fossils in adjacent formations, providing perhaps the longest continuous sequence of terrestrial sediments in the world.
The first reported discovery of fossils in the Cuyama area was by John B. Stevens, an oil company geologist, in the early 1900's. Others followed, but to this day the major published study was by Gideon T. James, of the University of California at Berkeley, who worked in the Cuyama badlands for ten months from 1957-58, producing nearly 4,500 identifiable mammal specimens. James published his work in 1963 as "Paleontology and Non marine Stratigraphy of the Cuyama Valley Badlands, California."
In 1964, while a student at UCLA, I ordered a copy of James from Berkeley, bought topographic maps, and started hiking and picking up a few fossils in the Cuyama Valley Badlands. In 1967 I was working in Port Hueneme north of Los Angeles. My son, Alan, was now six so the whole family would go up to Cuyama on occasion. Even at such an early age Alan displayed an aptitude for finding fossils, especially small ones. From the beginning, I spent a lot of time figuring out where we were on the maps, and labeling any fossils appropriately. Over the next twenty years the collection, all surface finds, grew to fill a cardboard box, and as planned they were eventually donated to a museum in 1989 along with my marked maps. It was a bitter disappointment to learn several years later that my maps may have been lost or discarded by the museum, since a staff paleontologist wrote in a letter (obtained by discovery) that the collection had no locality data. This collection was mostly isolated teeth and fragmented bones of mammals rabbit-size or larger ("macro-fossils"). A particularly prized specimen, found by my first wife Leah, was a peccary jaw from Apache Canyon. The museum promised us casts of important specimens, a write-up of the collection in the museum publication, and a free appraisal. All these promises were broken, except that after repeated insistence we did not have to pay for the appraisal. This was a mistake: the appraiser, referred to us by the museum, estimated the collection at around $15,000, half of what museum staff had estimated. I split the resulting $4,000 tax deduction with my son, a transaction that the government later tried to brand as commercial dealing on his part.
Alan claims that paleontologists have not initiated any significant work on micro- vertebrates in the area since 1972. "I am not collecting others' sites - none of the fossils would have been found by anyone else, and all would have long since been destroyed by erosion. At most of my locations there were no visible fossils in the field. The area where I have done most of my work, the Caliente formation, has approximately 250 square miles of badlands exposures. Estimating conservatively one diagnostic micro-fossil per three cubic feet of rock means that there are over a trillion such fossils within six inches of the surface just in the Caliente formation. I have not decreased, in any meaningful way, the number of these fossils that are available in the field. The value of these specimens resides in the effort required to pick them out of the rock, not in their presence in the field." Daniel characterizes the government's action as "a misinformed attempt to expropriate my son's labor and punish him and his family financially, despite the great personal effort and sacrifice he has made for paleontology. " "Who has he harmed?" he asks.
The VanArsdales claim they have been damaged by misinformation supplied to federal agencies and to the Justice Department by employees of local museums. Documents obtained by discovery reveal an April 17, 1990 letter to a local forest service official from a paleontologist employed in a California museum (not San Bernardino). He writes of Alan:
" If it makes any difference, he is selling (or trying to) his collections to any bidder - in my books, this makes him a 'dealer in government property.' The specimens are too valuable scientifically to simply be sold as curios."This serious accusation may have triggered the entire hassle, including a year of threats of felony prosecution. It thus deserves a detailed rebuttal. A Forest Service regulation prohibits "excavation, damaging, or removing any vertebrate fossil or removing any paleontological resource for commercial purposes without a special use authorization" [36 C.F.R. § 261.9 (i) ]. Thus one may collect plant and invertebrate fossils on Forest Service land for noncommercial purposes without a permit. There are a small number of such fossils in the Dream Quarry collection, and the United States laid claim to these in the complaint by this language: "Alan's excavation and removal from Federal land . . . of nonrenewable paleontological resources for commercial purposes without a special use permit violated 16 U.S.C. § 551 and 36 C.F.R. § 261.9 (i). " So did the United States ever charge that Alan sold, or tried to sell, the fossils at issue? Most certainly not. In the defendants' interrogatory #7 the United States was asked to give the name of any one who represented to them that Alan had ever tried to commercially dispose of any of the fossils. The answer: "Unknown at this time" (Oct. 8, 1997). Thus after years of investigation the United States had no credible witness that Alan ever was involved in the sale of the fossils at issue, contradicting the claim of Dr. X several years prior. So what was the "commercial purposes" the United States did charge Alan with in its complaint? The defendants asked this question in interrogatory # 6. The United State's response: "The plaintiff views the attempt to obtain a Federal Income Tax deduction for the donation of fossils as constituting 'commercial disposal.'" Note Dr. X charged that Alan was selling, or trying to sell, the fossils to any bidder, and as curios. This is a long way from donating them to a museum. Later letters reveal Dr. X was in communication with federal investigators in the case. If he had any evidence for his charge, he surely would have provided it. The simple fact is that Alan never sold or bartered any of these fossils, nor did he attempt to. He was always motivated by scientific curiosity, and Dr. X knew this.
Starting around 1988, Alan had contacted Dr. X, and had assisted him on field trips to the Caliente Formation led by Dr. X. Later Alan severed his relation with Dr. X and sought sponsorship by other paleontologists. This angered Dr. X and he began to blackball Alan with slanderous accusations, hoping no other paleontologist would work with him. And he tried to get Federal officials to take criminal action against Alan. Naively, I continued to write Dr. X about Alan's successes in the field, and even who he was approaching, thus facilitating this back stabbing.
Now let us back up a moment to the remarkable statement by the United States that seeking a tax deduction for donating fossils to a museum constitutes a commercial purpose. The Department of Agriculture (Forest Service) regulations do not define "commercial purposes," but in the corresponding regulations for the Department of Interior (BLM) it is defined as the "sale or barter to commercial dealers" [43 C.F.R. §8365.1-5 (c)]. True, there have been abuses of deductions for non cash donations, such as over appraised works of art. But the United States has never claimed the fossils were over appraised. Nor does a $15,000 tax deduction (estimated, not received, for the 1993 donation to San Bernardino) seem like very much for over two years of skilled and sometimes dangerous work (like climbing the steep sides of badlands canyons alone, miles from anyone else). I feel the United States' misrepresentation of Alan's motives by this accusation of commercialism was shameful. And it was done for a few non vertebrate micro-fossils of little value commercially or scientifically. The approach at the time was that Alan was a criminal, and that he should surrender any benefit for his years of volunteer work, including finder's credit. The litigation, otherwise, was honestly conducted though misguided. Failure to act on the settlement agreement may have come from higher up in the Justice Department, since initially it seemed to be moving forward.
Dr. X made other accusations against Alan. In a March 4, 1996 letter to the then Program Leader for Paleontology for the USDA Forest Service in Colorado, he wrote:
"Clearly the area is important, but I suspect most outcrops have been swept clean by VanArsdale. He used to brag that he intentionally disturbed or buried any exposure that produced good fossils so no one else could find anything."The first sentence reveals either remarkable ignorance of the number of fossils present in this vast exposure, or remarkable deceit and malice. As for the second sentence, compare this to what Dr. X said about Alan in a June 16, 1989 letter to a local Forest Service archaeologist :
"Alan VanArsdale led us to some very rich collecting areas and we discovered more important specimens in a single weekend than I do in years of collecting in similar-aged deposits in the Mojave Desert . . ."This surprising admission was made before the writer decided he had gotten all he could from Alan. Alan does remember mentioning to Dr. X that he had covered up some larger fossils to protect them from erosion.
There is more from Dr. X, but enough. Of course Dr. X is just one paleontologist, and the profession as a whole should not be judged by him. Just because they drink too much does not mean they are not nice people.
In recent years Federal prosecutors and judges have used felony theft statutes to prosecute amateur collectors of vertebrate fossils on Federal land. Some protection is needed (see the recommendations by the Committee below). But existing Federal regulations specify a misdemeanor instead of a felony. And the Forest Service regulations depend solely on the Antiquities Act of 1906. But the penal provisions of this Act have been found unconstitutionally vague by the Ninth Circuit Court [499 F.2d 113 (1974)]. In using theft ( 18 U.S.C Par. 641) to prosecute collectors, prosecutors have claimed government ownership by citing the common law of finds (exception for embedded objects). However the property clause of the US Constitution clearly reserves in Congress the sole authority to exercise proprietary rights over Federal Lands. Further, Congress need not exercise this power (U.S.C.A. Const. Art. 4, Par3, cl 2). Thus the prosecution of fossil collectors for felony theft of common law property is a violation of the separation of powers.
We successfully opposed a motion by the U.S. asserting Federal ownership
of vertebrate fossils found on Forest Service land. However the U.S. motion
was denied on a minor technical flaw. This flaw could have been corrected
in minutes (the motion was mis-titled), but the U.S. Attorney chose not
to refile. Thus I believe our legal argument may have some weight. This
is not a minor issue for some: Alan endured a year of threatened felony
prosecution because of this usurpation of Congressional authority. Further,
I talked to a young man who now has a felony conviction and served 14 months
in a federal prison for some fossil fish found in his vehicle [US v. Wade,
1997 WL 543368 (10th Cir. Sept. 3, 1997) (unpublished)] . Yet not a single
Federal statute prohibits fossil collecting, and the dubious agency
regulations specify a misdemeanor. If you are the victim of such "theft"
or "retention" charges, please have your attorney contact me and I can
send our opposition motion referred to above. At the least, this will tip
you to what precedents the US was using a few years ago.
I have retained below quotes from Paleontological Collecting, a committee report issued by the National Research Council in 1987. There is a need for laws and regulations concerning fossil collecting to be brought in line with the recommendations of the committee. These excerpts reveal the confusion of Federal agencies and prosecutors concerning the "protection" of "nonrenewable" fossils on Federal land. This confusion is particularly evident, and anti-scientific, in the case of micro vertebrate fossils from large formations. Apparently, Federal officials in this case were misinformed by some paleontologists who had a financial interest in salvaging micro vertebrate fossils (for huge fees) under a compulsory California paleontological salvage policy.
We present quotes from Paleontological Collecting, a 243 page report by the Committee on Guidelines for Paleontological Collecting, Board of Earth Sciences, for the National Research Council (National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1987). This thirteen member committee was composed of eight prestigious paleontologists, and representatives of state and federal governments and commercial interests. After the quotes we contrast the statements and recommendations of the Committee with the views and language used by the plaintiff in United States vs. Alan VanArsdale et. al. We also reveal how the current regulatory approach has deviated from Committee recommendations, and comment on the State of California compulsory paleontological salvage program.
"The Committee began to hold meetings in the spring of 1985 to develop a general statement of the appropriate role of government in the regulation (or lack thereof) of field collecting of the fossils of prehistoric plants and animals." (p. vii)
"Fossils are so numerous in some of the rocks of the Earth's crust that blanket statements such as 'all fossils must be protected are meaningless." (p. 1)
" . . . fossils are very different from human artifacts, but past attempts at regulation have tended to confuse the two. This has led to uncritical and often unfortunate transfers of standards and procedures from archaeology to paleontology." (p. 2)
"After much discussion and soul searching, the Committee adapted the following statement of principles as the basis for its detailed recommendations: In general, the science of paleontology is best served by unimpeded access to fossils and fossils-bearing rocks in the field. Paleontology's need for unimpeded access is in sharp contrast to the prevailing situation in archaeology. In this report, "access" is defined to include all collecting and removal of fossiliferous material for study and preservation. Generally, no scientific purpose is served by special systems of notification before collecting and reporting after collecting because these functions are performed well by existing mechanisms of scientific communication. From a scientific viewpoint, the role of the land manager should be to facilitate exploration for, and collecting of, paleontological material. (p. 2)Some of the conclusions and recommendations - approved unanimously by the full Committee on Sept. 14, 1986:" In view of what must be done to make specimens of fossils scientifically useful, leaving specimens of fossils in their natural setting is not sensible. Fossils left behind are eventually destroyed by weathering and erosion." (p. 11)
"Attempts have been made by various federal agencies to regulate the collecting of fossils under statutes, or derived regulations, intended for archeological objects. This development is attributable to the misunderstanding that paleontology is closely allied with archeology in its methods, objects of study, and goals." (p. 11)
"Fossil specimens cannot be called a "resource" in the usual sense of the word. Unlike some mineral resources, the supply of specimens of most fossil species is effectively inexhaustible. New specimens of most species are continuously being exposed by erosion and by man made excavations, such as road cuts, building excavations, mining, and quarrying. For most species, the only process that can completely remove all specimens is the removal of the entire formation by erosion or by large-scale mining and quarrying." (p. 16)
"Surface collecting by itself has little, if any, environmental impact, unless a site regularly attracts many people. As already mentioned, most collecting sites are 'renewable' annually through normal erosion and weathering." (p. 19)
". . . even with vertebrates, only a tiny fraction of the potential sites is ever excavated. . . . The number of potentially important sites vastly outnumbers the paleontologists, professional or amateur, able to carry out expensive and time-consuming quarrying operations." (p. 19)
"The environmental impact of quarrying fossils is limited to effects typical of any excavation. The environmental perturbations caused by fossil quarries are negligible compared to those caused by road building or surface mining, and, in most cases, paleontological quarries are obliterated by natural processes within a few years. The Committee recognizes that some limits should be placed on paleontological quarrying for such reasons as protecting livestock and endangered species." (p. 19)
" Renewability of fossils. Fossil-collecting sites are typically 'renewed' by the normal forces of erosion and weathering and by preservation of entombed specimens in the laboratory. To call fossils 'nonrenewable' may be technically true, but in a practical sense, it is false for most species." (p. 22)
"Minimizing collecting. Because the supply of fossils is rarely finite and because fossils are for all practical purposes renewable, there is no general justification for minimizing scientific collecting. The act of collecting fossils has value throughout the range of scientific and societal uses. However, it is the view of the Committee that commercial collecting on the public lands should be controlled by a permit procedure and carried out with thorough scientific oversight." (p. 22)
"Recommendation #3. All public lands should be open to fossil collecting for scientific purposes. Except in cases involving quarrying or commercial collecting, collecting fossils on public lands (other than National Parks) should not be subject to permit requirements or other regulation. The Committee recommends the following procedures and definitions:
Reconnaissance Collecting: Requires no advance notice to any public land manger; no permit is required. Such collecting is a day or less at any one locality and involves surface collecting by hand tools.The Committee report gives the position statement of the Paleontology Society on the protection of paleontological resources, adapted at its 17th annual meeting, Sept. 24-27, 1980. This includes:Extended Stay Collecting: Requires written advance notice to the land manager so that applicable rules can be known and followed; no permit is required. Consists of surface collecting for more than one day by using hand tools.
Quarrying for Fossils: For this report, a paleontological quarry is defined as an excavation of greater than two (2) cubic yards initiated for the extraction of fossils. Collecting fossils by quarrying should be controlled by a permit procedure. Permit forms should be simple." (p. 24-25)
"Recommendation #4 . . . There is no justification for requiring that fossils be deposited in an institution in the same state in which they were found: such requirements discourage paleontological research." (p. 25)
"Recommendation #7. Blanket paleontological inventories, mitigation, or salvage activities should not be undertaken, funded, or required by government agencies as a routine part of environmental assessment, impact analysis, permitting, land management, or similar programs. By facilitating the work of scientists, land managers and other agencies can take advantage of the most effective means of accomplishing inventory objectives, i.e. increasing knowledge of fossil distributions on public lands. Thus, surface paleontological collecting should be encouraged on all public lands, including Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, Research Natural Areas, Wilderness Study Areas, and Designated Wilderness Areas." (p. 26)
"5. Few, if any, invertebrate fossils, paleobotanical, microfaunal or microfloral fossils deserve protection from unrestricted professional or noncommercial amateur collection." (p. 68)We now compare the above statements and conclusions with the case United States vs. Alan VanArsdale et. al. Let us assume here for argument sake that some of the sedimentary rock that Alan collected in the field (and which contained the micro-fossils) was collected from Federal land. According to the Committee, would this have adversely effected paleontology, and should a permit have been be required?"13. Any proposed law or regulation restricting fossil collection must recognize the fossiliferous nature of rocks and the need for law and regulation only for unusual, rare, specific categories of fossils." (p. 69)
In the Committee's opinion, Alan would have only benefited scientific inquiry. Since he was recording locality data and reporting his finds to paleontologists; leading them to sites (or offering to do so); and either giving, loaning or donating the fossils to museums, land managers should have "facilitated" his "exploration and collecting." If he had not collected the tiny fossils they would have been "destroyed by weathering and erosion." None of his sites were previously collected by any paleontologist, and the Committee points out that "the number of important sites vastly outnumbers the paleontologists" able to collect from them. The report confirms that his efforts could have negligible environmental impact, indeed the total volume of sedimentary rock removed by Alan at all collecting sites was less than two cubic yards, the minimum the committee defines as constituting a "paleontological quarry." Instead his work falls in the category of "Reconnaissance Collecting" - for which the Committee felt no advance notice or permit should be required. Further, the Paleontology Society formally recommended in 1980 that "few, if any, . . . microfaunal fossils deserve protection from unrestricted professional or noncommercial amateur collection." Almost all the fossils at issue are microfaunal.
The complaint in United States vs. Alan VanArsdale et. al. repeatedly applies the word "nonrenewable" to the fossils at issue, for example in paragraph 22 it accuses Alan of removing "nonrenewable paleontological resources." The Committee exposes this as a legal technicality "false for most species." For Alan's fossil rodent parts, all from a thick rock formation covering hundreds of square miles, it is certainly false. As the Committee states, these fossils are in fact "renewed by weathering and erosion." Salvage paleontologists also repeatedly insist fossils are "nonrenewable," perhaps to confuse legislators and the public about the urgency of their expensive "salvage" operations, or to create an aura of environmentalism. Neither the Federal regulators, U.S. Attorneys, nor salvage paleontologists tell you that with as much legal validity, any ordinary rock, or the mud on your shoes, is also "nonrenewable." Note that the Committee advises against the very kind of paleontological salvage projects now sanctioned by the State of California under environmental impact policy. Perhaps this policy was instituted because legislators and administrators confused the needs of archeology (which requires more protection and salvage) with paleontology. The Committee frequently attempts to correct this confusion. The Committee also criticizes the use of the word "resource" as applied fossils, noting that most fossil species are "effectively inexhaustible."
This Committee report was passed by unanimous consent of the thirteen members. Unfortunately it has been ignored or overlooked by legislators and agency officials, and rejected by institutional paleontologists. Instead of lessening permit red tape and facilitating scientific collecting, agencies, including the BLM and the Forest Service, have further restricted it since the Committee report was published. In Southern California, permits may be nearly impossible to obtain because of inaction, granting of exclusive rights to local museums (a practice criticized the the Committee in recommendation #4), or unwillingness to realize that amateurs can contribute to paleontology (such contributions are detailed in the Committee report). Fossils on federal land are looked upon as valuable permanent property as they lie, in ignorance of their imminent destruction by erosion. Nor is there an awareness that they are renewable. Based only on unsubstantiated accusations, collectors are threatened with felony theft of government property by the BLM.
Agency investigators and U.S. Attorneys are naively over influenced by museum employees, unaware of bias arising from territorial privileges or financial interests. These museum employees may operate as a legally privileged elite, who not only exercise a veto over who can collect the public's fossils, but also who should be sued or prosecuted for possible invasions of their private reserve. Two recent Federal actions suggest that these paleontologists are most likely to point the prosecutorial finger at those whose success in the field is embarrassing, rather than those who are destroying paleontological evidence. Added temptation to misinform prosecutors and the public exists in California where lucrative contracts to salvage fossils from construction sites are mandated by the State and some counties. Some of these projects recover only microvertebrates. Now what if a kid with a rock hammer can go out and find so many of these tiny fossils that it equates to a million dollars in salvage fees? It is better he go to jail. Here is a little known discovery: these tiny bones and teeth of microvertebrates are all over the place - in just about all sedimentary rock that was deposited on land. You don't see them in the field, but by washing you can usually find a few in any cubic foot of such rock. So don't expect such "salvage" work to run out of sites any time soon.
In November, 2000 the UC Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) at Berkeley put museum politics ahead of science and rejected our offer to donate the fossils to them. As the joint donor, the Assistant US Attorney approved this repository, but did not help the effort by adding that he preferred the fossils remain at the San Bernardino Museum of Natural History, the institution that initially sought to criminalize Alan's volunteer efforts in hunting micro-fossils. It is noteworthy that California museums file "competitive" bids to perform paleontological salvage. Yet apparently two of them are so solicitous of the interests of their "competitor", the San Bernardino museum, that they have declined to accept a valuable and scientifically documented collection of 28,000 micro-fossils.
Almost all of the 28,000 micro-fossils in the 1993 donation came from one small area twenty feet up the side of a steep canyon wall. Thus any allegation of inadequate locality data is hogwash. This was the "Dream Quarry" - seen in a dream, but a dream of someone who knew the stratigraphy of this area with an intimacy born of years of study and walking the beds.
Alan repeatedly offered to lead paleontologists to the Dream Quarry,
but Forest Service red tape, museum territorialism and pending betrayal
thwarted it. No one has been to the Dream Quarry since around 1990. Alan
has offered to take any representative of the institution that accepts
the collection to the Dream Quarry - there are probably still some rich
sediments left. But as the years go by, these highly fossiliferous rocks
erode away, destroying the little treasures within - the tiny bones and
teeth of rodents, hedgehogs, shrews and scores of other creatures
that scurried about and fell prey to owls 15 million years ago. And somewhere
in a Department of Justice file, polaroid photographs of the Dream Quarry,
seized by subpoena and never returned, slowly fade out. Of course there
were many other promising fossil localities that Alan discovered, though
none so amazing as the Dream Quarry. Most of these hot spots are now completely
eroded away, but erosion has also exposed new ones. By now, at very little
expense, Alan could have produced a million diagnostic micro-fossils, all
with accurate locality data and his own expert stratigraphic identifications,
and all donated to an accredited museum. Instead, agencies of the United
States Government were talked into "protecting" these fossils!
A settlement agreement in this case was approved by the court on March 31, 2000. The fossils at issue are to be a joint donation by Alan VanArsdale and the United States to "an accredited repository in the United States of America, selected by mutual agreement of the parties." However, over three years later, such a repository has not been agreed upon! The University of California Museum of Paleontology (Berkeley) rejected an offer to donate the fossils to them without explanation. After that, in a Feb. 17, 2001 letter to the Assistant US Attorney Robert I. Lester, the defendants stated that the following institutions would be acceptable: (1) The Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC, (2) The American Museum of Natural History, New York, (3) The Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale Univ. In a May 9, 2001 call the defendants added (4) the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles to this list. The United States has yet to approve or disapprove of any of these four prestigious institutions as a suitable repository. It has stated it prefers the collection remain at the San Bernardino Museum, and is thus trying to get by inaction what it could not get in court or by agreement with the defendants. And some museums are apparently boycotting the collection, perhaps in deference to the stated wishes of the Assistant US Attorney..
The settlement agreement also stated that micro-vertebrate fossils loaned (not donated) to the San Bernardino County Museum of Natural History were to be returned to Alan. However, when these were picked up in June 2000, only 21 specimens were returned, instead of the several hundred loaned. The large number of fossils loaned is confirmed by the United States complaint in the action:
"Without the knowledge or permission of the United States, on or about January 14, 1992, Alan loaned approximately 700-800 rodent and other small nonrenewable vertebrate specimens of fossils, dating from the Clarendonian and Hemphillian ages, to the San Bernardino County Museum."No explanation for these huge losses has been offered by the museum. At the settlement conference the defendants did not know that the loaned fossils had been lost or stolen while at the San Bernardino County Museum. But apparently the United States did know, but did not inform the defendants. The settlement agreement craftily refers to "categories 1-21 of Exhibit A" to be vested in Alan VanArsdale. But these "categories" turned out to be single specimens, all that was left of hundreds of fossil rodent teeth, all with stratigraphic data. A written request by the VanArsdales that the major collection (28,000 specimens, joint property of Alan and the US) be checked for similar losses has been ignored by both the United States and the San Bernardino museum. This large collection, or what is left of it, remains under seizure at the Museum.
In the spirit of the settlement, I had removed most of the content of this WWW site. But since the United States continues to ignore my requests for agreement on a repository, and at least a partial inventory check of the fossils, I have restored (and revised) much of what was previously available here. (6/17/2003)
Ironically, I used to be a museum booster, and would volunteer time
and buy things in the gift store just to help out. Now I feel compelled
to warn any reading this to be very cautious about donations, and especially
"loans," to a museum. If you have in your possession any vertebrate fossil
remains, think twice about approaching a paleontologist about them. You
may be set up for felony criminal charges, no matter how harmless your
collecting has been, no matter how sincere your desire to contribute to
science is, and no matter how much they pretend to be your friend. It anguishes
me to issue this warning, since all my life I have loved the science of
paleontology (my son's middle name is "Darwin"). Amateurs have made great
contributions to paleontology in the past, and often go on to earn doctorates.
However, the discovery of a hundred new species is not worth the criminal
prosecution of one innocent person.
Daniel W. VanArsdale received an MA in mathematics from UCLA in 1967 and is an Army veteran. In addition to published mathematical research, he has collected and analyzed folklore materials. Though now retired, he is still active in research. He lives in Lompoc, California with his wife Sharon.