In December 2020, the world of paleontology marveled at the discovery of a rare dinosaur specimen, described in a scientific study that named it: Ubirajarawhich in the Tupi language means “lord of the spears”, and jubatus, from the Latin for crest. This unique animal had feathers and four extraordinary pointed bumps along the neck. Supposedly, this valuable fossil dinosaur of about 110 million years old arrived in Germany in 1995 under strange circumstances. Because legally that natural treasure could not leave the deposits of Brazil. But it was available to scientists at the Karlsruhe Natural History Museum 25 years later, where they say everything is in order.
Now him ubirajara jubatus it has disappeared. Physically, he is still in Karlsruhe, but for now he is lost to science; It is in the limbo of the species. After the study that gave it its name was published, a great protest was organized on the networks that ended up forcing the scientific journal (Cretaceous Research) to remove it. Like would never have existed. The Ubirajara it vanished After the scandal, when the dust settled, many people from the world of paleontology began to ask questions. And a taboo was placed on the table, provoking passionate reactions: the concept of colonialism.
During the colonial era, it was common for the powers to extract fossils from the colonized regions and take them to the capitals for exhibition and study. “Right now what’s happening is parachute science,” explains paleontologist Nussaibah Raja-Schoob, “where scientists from richer countries go to poorer countries, collect fossils and data, and then bring it back to their homes.” institutions where they study. This scientist from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) denounces that, in addition, many times “there is also no exchange of knowledge with local researchers, something very similar to what happened during colonial times.” This natural resource is used and nothing is left in return, not even knowledge or academic training.
Raja-Schoob published with six other paleontologists A study in which they put figures to that scientific skydiving. Although some of the most profitable deposits on the planet are in developing countries, during the last 30 years 97% of the fossil data was produced by scientists from rich countries. Due to historical inertia “an imbalance of global power in paleontology persists,” they criticize. “Our findings show that colonial history and economics influence the patterns we see in paleontology. Seeing it so obvious from the data was the biggest surprise of all,” says the paleontologist.
According to their numbers, the country that studies the most fossils is the US, but many of those have been extracted on their own land. Instead, it is followed by three others, Germany, the United Kingdom and France, which proportionally exploit many fossils from third countries, and largely without local collaboration. What they define as skydiving. Spain is the tenth country for scientific production in this field, but “more than half comes from data collected locally, that is, Spanish researchers investigating Spanish fossils,” says Raja-Schoob. And he claims: “I think that researchers around the world, especially those in the richest countries, should think about the consequences of not engaging with local communities and researchers from a country in their science when they are researching abroad” .
Later, participated in a new study reviewing the trajectory of two regions very rich in fossils in Mexico and Brazil, two countries in which it is prohibited to export these treasures. Still, they occur countless irregularities, as explained by the main author of the study, Juan Carlos Cisneros, from the Brazilian Federal University of Piauí. “There is a huge asymmetry. In archeology this problem is talked about, in museums too, but in paleontology it is a taboo. We have to talk about this because it exists, not sweep it under the rug,” Cisneros demands.
This asymmetry that he denounces occurs between countries that produce fossils, in the global south, and countries that produce scientific knowledge thanks to these materials, in the rich north, which uses objects collected now or in that colonial past. As the Spanish paleontologist Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Marco, from the Institute of Geosciences (CSIC-UCM), explains, sometimes it is normal to take advantage of the knowledge obtained decades ago. “There are many young people who do not have the resources to go out into the field and then what do they do? Well, they open museum drawers and find a fossil from 80 or 180 years ago and describe it because it is a new dinosaur. And if that bone is from Africa, is that paratrooper or colonialist science? Well no, it’s just that there is no money and the museum’s resources have been used”, he defends.
historical inertia
There are, therefore, different problems. On the one hand, scientists from the north who take advantage of the black market or export irregularly. In addition, others that are deployed in the original countries without sharing the knowledge generated, or collaborating with local researchers. Another situation is when historical inertia is used to continue publishing with fossils extracted decades ago.
Gutiérrez Marco remembers when Spain was a reservoir for other countries in the 1970s. We have suffered for many years. In my youth the Germans and the Dutch would come and they would take away whole trucks full of fossils and of course the Spanish part did not appear anywhere in their work”, he says.
Many countries that are sources of fossils develop strict regulations that prevent this skydiving, such as Argentina, but these scientists denounce that as long as no measures are taken from within, the problem will continue to occur. As these recent studies show, the issue has moved from those who legislate to others like Myanmar or the Dominican Republic, where numerous pieces of amber with insects trapped inside tens of millions of years ago are extracted. “The miners themselves are selling bags full of amber at an absolutely ridiculous price. And I have not bought, and that there is no law that tells me that this is illegal. What happens is that these things are not done,” says Enrique Peñalver, a paleontologist at the Spanish Geological and Mining Institute (IGME), who has worked with materials from those countries.
There are some cases of malpractice, but paleontologists do not go around stealing fossils
Enrique Penalver, IGME
Both Gutiérrez Marco and Peñalver explain that when they go to work in those countries they try to train young scientists from there, and that the fossils stay in local institutions. But it is not always easy to establish collaborations because the administrations lack the resources to finance studies or doctorates in places like Morocco. “I think it is exaggerated using the term colonialism. There are some obvious cases of malpractice, but we paleontologists don’t go around stealing fossils like in the movies,” summarizes Peñalver, after explaining how he fights for Dominican fossils to remain in the country’s public museums, in charge of local scientists, and not in private collections.
All the researchers consulted agree that bad practices are not only an ethical problem, but above all a scientific tragedy. “Paleontology is a science that depends a lot on the context in which everything is found,” summarizes Cisneros. “If you find a dinosaur in Brazil, you are not only going to excavate that dinosaur, you are going to see everything that is around: fossils of other species, from which point it came from, from what level. When you acquire a fossil on the black market, all of that is lost. Sometimes even fossils have been adulterated. That information is lost and can no longer be retrieved. It is bad science”, regrets the researcher.
Omar Regalado, a Mexican researcher at the German University of Tübingen, is another of the paleontologists who denounce the problems, especially because he believes that they damage the reputation of the entire group. And he assures that it is not about nationalism. “The complaint is general. In Mexico, there are also practices in which decontextualized samples are collected. We must take care that foreigners do not do things wrong, but first we lead by example. We have to follow these ethical standards so that we can demand them from the international community”, he claims.
In general, paleontologists are optimistic about the outcome of this global conversation that began with online campaigns calling for the return of the Ubirajara, still pending diplomatic resolution between German and Brazilian institutions. “We get some negative feedback,” admits Raja-Schoob, “but the positives definitely outnumber them.” “Our article has already been included in student reading materials in many departments,” he celebrates.
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