Say I come across what is, in my opinion, a major find. I’m just a regular Joe off the streets. What is my next step? Because this has pretty much happened and I contacted the Museum of Natural History and they do not take unsolicited finds or submissions !?!? WTF? What if it’s a new breed of dinosaur or something?
I really don’t know what to do. I’ve contacted a few people from colleges to no avail. It’s been two months and I’ve contacted at least 6 people who seem reputable with no reply.
What now? Any ideas as to what the protocol is on this situation?
What is the nature of your evidence that you have a major dinosaur find?
What kind of information did you provide to the “Museum of Natural History”? Can you tell us which one?
Museums and universities get a lot of calls from people who think they have found a dinosaur when actually they’ve found some old soup bones. Without knowing what you actually told them, we can’t evaluate why they might be ignoring it.
Sure, but if you find the archaeologist, he’ll be able to tell you who the paleontologist is.
What we really need to know is why the OP believes he’s found dinosaur fossils in the first place.
It’s a common misconception that fossils are hard to find. If you go to the right place, you can find truckloads of fossils. The trouble is that digging them up, cataloging them, curating them, and studying them is lots and lots of work. Any paleontologist knows dozens or hundreds of sites to find fossils, the problem is figuring out which sites are worth working on.
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweeness on the desert air.
-Walt Whitman
If you can provide some details about your ‘fossil’ I can ask him in person. I do know that depending where you are, fossils are rather ubiquitous and you’re probably welcome to keep small ones you find. Obviously, if you’ve uncovered an entire t-rex while putting in your roses, I would include those details in any e-mails you send to people.
Well, I sent an email to a Dr. Roger Thomas who is in charge of The Paleontological Society www.paleosoc.org and I sent him about 8 pics and he wrote back today and stated:
I found the fossils about 4 feet underground in the side of a creek bank on my granny’s farm here in Maryland. The bones are basically formed into the rock that we found. I will post a pic or four below for you to see. Also, I don’t want to say it’s a “major find”, but I did find something. I just don’t know what yet. I also provided no pics to the Museum of Natural History, just a brief email of what we found and I also asked to whom do we speak to about sending some pictures. No response yet.
Again, what do you mean by the “Museum of Natural History”? The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington? And who did you send the e-mail to? They get a lot of inquiries by people who think they may have found something interesting. It may take some time to get to the right person to respond.
Yup, the Museum of Natural history in DC is who I contacted. I actually sent an email to the webmaster because there aren’t any staff lists on the website, nor does it look like they take unsolicited submissions. So, Carl Mehling from the Fossil Amphibian, Reptile, and Bird Collections, Division of Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History got my email from the webmaster and wrote back just about an hour ago to me tell me all about their Annual Identification Day coming up in two days that is held in New York and the he is manning one of the tables.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it up there to show him, so I hope something else will be worked out. But slowly, things look as if they may be starting to fall into place. Maybe with the help of you guys and also me digging around on the net, someone will come along and want to see what we found.
But I did not know about the finds in Maryland, thanks for that Colibri !
One more thing, the pictures I posted only show one of the many “fossils” we unearthed. There are a couple that are 8 feet long and have what appear to be hands, vertebre and skulls within the rock. Very interesting items I must say.
This is honestly my favorite thread ever. This is the stuff (my) dreams are made of. I’m so excited for you, diggleblop!! Hopefully the fossils are something extra super cool.
Although, what could be cooler than finding fossils like these yourself?
I’m currently working on a new museum here in Panama which will include fossils in one of the galleries. I recently visited the National Museum as well as other museums to arrange for the loan of specimens or for making replicas of them to display in our museum.
But I’ve been interested in fossils since I was a kid, visiting the dinosaur halls at the American Museum in NY. While it’s not my own field (which is ornithology) I have a fairly good knowledge of it.
You lucky devil, diggleblop. To my eye that looks like a lovely find. Is that green stain actual mineralisation or plant growth? If the former, it’s possibly phosphatization, which is raree-ish for big animals.
Gotta say, they don’t look an awful lot like bones to me either - maybe a lot of the subtlety has been lost in the photo though.
My first reaction though, was to remember this - it’s a picture I took in Spain last year while we were out walking in the hills near Bolnuevo - it looks like a jawbone with a row of teeth, but is in fact just a natural rock formation.