German raiders loot Britain

Press, 27 October 1977, Page 21

German raiders loot Britain

Rare fossils more than 400 million years old have been “looted" from British geological sites by German collectors using pneumatic drills and power saws, according to a museum official.

The German foraging parties made their most recent raid in the spring of this year, at Lesmahagow in Lanark, Scotland, a site famous for its fossils for a hundred years. They ripped up hundreds of yards of rock with pneumatic drills and used the power saws to cut off prize specimens, probably fossil sea scorpions, for which the site is best known. ' They left behind empty beer and wurst tins, German newspapers, and a dated envelope, clues which require no Sherlock Holmes to elucidate. But they broke no British law — geological specimens enjoy no protection, unlike works of art or archeological sites.

Dr lan Rolfe of the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, a collector himself, has no obligation to legitimate fossil-hunters, whatever their nationality. But the fears that the scale of the German raids, and the fact that the fossils were taken out without proper scientific observation or recording, could damage important geological sites beyond repair. German fossil hunters, he says, have a “great and strong tradition” of collecting, both in their own country and abroad. He suspects the Lesmaghagow raiding party are collectors who trade in fossils, either exchanging them for other fossils or selling them. On the open market, fine specimens can fetch a lot of money. Fossil horses have gone for as much as $17,000 and fossil bats commonly fetch up to $l7OO. The site at Lesmahagow has been famous

since Dr J. R. S. Hunter, a Victorian fossil collector, spent three months there in 1882. The oldest genuine fossil sea scorpion found was discovered there. Dr Rolfe believes that it is time some form of protection was extended to geological specimens to prevent their export from Britain if they are of particular scientific interest

And the problem is not simply a British one: in the same issue of the Nature Conservancy Council bulletin in which Dr Rolfe reports the German raids, Dr

Omulf Lauritzen of the Norwegian Polar Institute describes plans which the Norwegian authorities have adopted to defeat the raiders.

"Amateur and professional collectors had appeared on the scene in such numbers that action was required,” Dr Lauritzen reports. What was done was to produce a short list of sites in the greatest danger, and the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment then accepted responsibility for guarding them. — O.F.N.S. copyright.