Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Correspondence
Nature 414, 485 (29 November 2001) | doi:10.1038/35107232
Could sale of fossils be the key to ending theft?
Edward Krowitz1
- 98 Riverside Drive, Apt. 7E, New York, New York 10024, USA
Although the federal legislation being prepared to safeguard the fossil record may attain some of the wished-for goals described in your News story "US lays out bare bones of fossil protection package" (see Nature 413, 555; 2001), experience and theory suggest that fossil theft from federal lands will continue.Assuming there is strict enforcement, criminalizing the unauthorized removal of fossils and increasing penalties may reduce pillaging in the short run, but over the long term the trade in looted archaeological and other cultural property has increased since efforts started being made to control it.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).