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ScienceWildlife Watch
After being excavated and fashioned into dinosaur dig kits, carved figurines, jewelry, and more for sale, “tens of thousands of pounds of dinosaur bones have lost virtually all scientific value.”
ByDina Fine Maron
Published October 19, 2023
• 6 min read
Federal prosecutors today announced charges against four people allegedly involved in a massive dinosaur bone smuggling scheme. Thousands of pounds of dinosaurs and other fossils were secretly excavated from government lands in Utah, according to court documents. Some were sold at gem shows, and others were shipped to China after being mislabeled as construction materials or gems. The poaching and subterfuge, court documents allege, lasted at least from March 2018 to earlier this year.
“By removing and processing these dinosaur bones to make consumer products for profit, tens of thousands of pounds of dinosaur bones have lost virtually all scientific value, leaving future generations unable to experience the science and wonder of these bones,” United States Attorney Trina Higgins said in a press statement.
“It’s certainly a significant volume of dinosaur bones,” says David Evans, a paleontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum who’s not involved in the case. He adds that it’s unusual for so much material to be removed from government lands, and that many people likely aren’t aware of the scale of the black market on U.S. dinosaur specimens.
Some of the dinosaur bones were fashioned into commercial products, including dinosaur dig kits, carved figurines, knives, jewelry, and polished bowling ball-like spheres, according to court documents.
Federal agents seized one shipment of dinosaur bones bound for China in December 2022 in Long Beach, California. The 17,000 pounds of fossil material had been mislabeled as industrial stone.
Before now, one of the biggest known dinosaur fossil busts occurred in 2006, when 8,000 pounds of fossils—including thousands of dinosaur eggs, petrified pine cones, and prehistoric crabs—were seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at a gem and mineral show in Tucson, Arizona. Those items had been illegally taken from Argentina.
In Utah, dinosaur bones found on private lands may be legally excavated and sold, but it is a crime to dig up and sell fossils discovered on federal or state lands. Charges against the four Utah defendants, who are scheduled to have their initial court appearance later today in Salt Lake City, include conspiracy against the U.S., false labeling, theft of U.S. property, money laundering, and attempted smuggling of goods, among others.
A dino trafficking scheme
Beneath Utah’s surface, there’s a rich cache of dinosaur fossils, revealing details about prehistoric animals such as carnivorous allosauruses and spine-backed stegosauruses. Almost three-quarters of the state consists of public lands managed by federal or state agencies, and recent fossil finds there include a huge collection of Utahraptors and an entirely new species, a big-nosed distant relative of Triceratops.
Court documents describing the years-long Utah poaching operation allege that Vint and Donna Wade purchased illegally obtained bones and other fossils to sell at U.S. gem and mineral shows and also to ship to China, and that Jordan Willing and his father Steve Willing trafficked dinosaur bones to China using their company JMW Sales. The documents also allege that two unnamed and unindicted coconspirators illegally excavated fossils from federal lands and sold them off to the Wades.
In total, the Wades sold over $1 million in paleontological material to the Willings, according to the court documents, which were filed in the U.S. District Court in the District of Utah.
The fossil heist also led to $3 million in damages, the federal government claims, including large restoration and repair expenses and the costs of losses to science.
During the years of the alleged smuggling activity, the fossil shipments did sometimes run into problems. One shipment of dinosaur bones that was sent from Scottsdale, Arizona, to China in March 2019 was falsely labeled as items including jasper and wood, but the cargo was ultimately held up in China “due to high radiation levels,” court documents state. The fossilized materials had apparently picked up natural radioactive material over time. (Investigators can sometimes discover the origin of fossils based on radioactive signatures in the specimens that provide clues about where they were buried.)
Paleontologists typically remove dinosaur bones using a methodological process designed to limit damage and preserve evidence found in the fossils and their surroundings—revealing clues about when dinosaurs lived, what species they were, and sometimes even how they behaved.
Amateur diggers hunting for recognizable body parts to sell, however, generally do not take such care. Federal prosecutors claim that the loss to science from this poaching ring is largely incalculable.
The National Geographic Society supports Wildlife Watch, our investigative reporting project focused on wildlife crime and exploitation. Read more Wildlife Watch stories here, and send tips, feedback, and story ideas to [email protected]. Learn about the National Geographic Society’s nonprofit mission at natgeo.com/impact.
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