A Bone To Pick ?

Dino bone was easily my dad’s favorite rock. There was a time when there was a LOT of it in his back yard. When my dad retired, he decided to focus on selling the dino bone … and he did pretty well. When I disposed of the family property, I was shocked to discover how little was still there.

My Dad's Dino Bone Butterfly

Today, collectable dino bone simply doesn’t exist out there in the desert anymore. People like my dad got it all. And federal laws prohibiting the collection of bone are actually enforced today. Those laws were not enforced a half century ago when my dad was collecting.

My dad was a “strong, silent type” and I can only recall talking about this once. I was in college and didn’t go out with my dad anymore. But I had become aware that collecting dino bone was probably illegal. (It would be legal if the dino bone was collected from private property.) I asked him about it. He said he would stop rockhounding when people stopped digging up the desert with D-8 Caterpillar tractors to get the same rocks.

In today’s debates about law and justice, my dad’s answer would be called, “Whataboutism”. “What about all those other people? They’re doing it too!” I won’t defend my dad’s answer but it’s a way of thinking that many … maybe even all … people will use when they can't really justify something.

I recall a lecture given by Craig Childs, author of the book “Finders Keepers”. Childs is a self-described “relic hunter” – someone who looks for archeological artifacts. Collecting those is illegal too. Highly illegal. Dr. James Redd, a respected physician in the Southern Utah town of Blanding committed suicide after being charged with a felony count of trafficking in archaeological artifacts a few years ago. Not long after that, a second defendant, Steven Shrader of Santa Fe, N.M., was found dead of two self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The people of Blanding still harbor deep resentment over the episode. As far as I know, nobody has died as a result of illegally collecting dino bone, but the tourist shops in Moab, Utah are very sensitive about it.

Childs wasn’t an illegal pot hunter. He was on the staff of institutions – museums and universities – that would go out and excavate archeological sites legally. He had deep personal feelings about that. In his book, he describes how he actually broke into a museum to steal a pot so he could return it to where it was found. He refuses to specifically identify which museum for obvious reasons. When I talked to Childs, it was clear that he was still conflicted about what the right thing to do would be.

Jane Kurtz wrote a book, “The Bone Wars” about paleontologists O. C. Marsh and Edward Cope who ripped whole skeletons of dino's out of western lands for eastern museums and universities. It’s hard to tell the difference between what they did and what my dad did except that they had much better educations and connections. Don Burge, the founder of the Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah, put my dad on the museum Board of Directors. I talked to him about collecting bone from the desert once and he didn’t have a problem with it. My dad donated a six foot long dino bone femur to the prehistoric museum. (Gem quality bone, every inch! It was my playground as a kid.)

My own attitude is that being forward looking is a much better way to live than constantly making sure that the mistakes of the past remain open wounds. Learning from the past is good. We should try it in the US. But trying to correct the past by doing something in the present usually just makes the present worse. I wrote this essay while giving away a nice chunk of dino bone in a contest. I hope whoever gets it really enjoys owning this hundred million year old part of the past.