GREEN RIVER, Utah—Fossil Point Trailhead at the remote desert base of southern Utah’s Morrison Formation marks the beginning of a long trek back to when dinosaurs roamed the land.
If you walk along the rugged trail with its ancient stream channels, you’ll eventually encounter fossil bones protruding from the mammoth boulders and multi-hued sandstone layers.
Dr. James Kirkland, the state paleontologist at Utah’s Geological Survey, said the 600,000 square-mile Morrison Formation has yielded some of the world’s best examples of dinosaur skeletons, like Tyrannosaurus Rex, since the location’s discovery in 1877.
The entire state of Utah is a trove for dinosaur remains, he said, attracting paleontologists, students, and fossil enthusiasts far and wide.
“We have the most continuous dinosaur record on the planet,” Mr. Kirkland said. “We have football-field size bone beds of all new dinosaurs we’ve been finding recently.”
“Nowhere else is there such a continuous record.”
The fossil evidence indicates that non-avian dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago, possibly when an asteroid hit Earth, killing roughly 70 percent of the planet’s species.
But years of hard work finding and preserving these long-dead specimens face a clear and present threat from dinosaur bone “poachers” raiding state and federal lands and making millions on the black market.
The damage to the fossil record in Utah caused by poachers is beyond measure, Mr. Kirkland told The Epoch Times.
“They’re drilling and dynamiting them out of the rocks. I’ve been taken out to sites where they dynamited bone beds,” he said.
“You can see where they had campfire rings to huddle around and get warm while they destroyed the site.”
“I’ve had sites where people came in, and we’d leave the site to do laundry. We’d come back, and there’s a new hole in our pit. They dug in and stole stuff. You know they’re watching us.”
The tragic rule of the dinosaur bone profession is “you can’t fix what you’ve ruined,” Mr. Kirkland said.
While stealing dinosaur bones and fossils isn’t new, catching thieves in the act is a challenge for federal law enforcement spread thin within Utah’s badlands.
It’s the “wild west” of paleontology at times, Mr. Kirkland said, although federal law enforcement agencies have been making headway to stem the flow of ill-gotten fossils.
On Oct. 19, a federal grand jury returned a 13-count indictment charging four people for illegally purchasing and selling 75 tons of dinosaur fossils worth more than $1 million from public lands in southeastern Utah.
“The dollar amount represents 150,000 pounds of paleontological resources, including dinosaur bones, illegally removed from federal and state lands in southeastern Utah,” according to the U.S. District Attorney’s Office in Utah.
The alleged activity took place between 2018 and as late as March 2023 in violation of the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act (PRPA).
The defendants—Vint Wade, 65, and Donna Wade, 67, of Moab, Utah; Steven Willing, 67, of Los Angeles, California; and Jordan Willing, 40, of Ashland, Oregon—also stand accused of causing $3 million in damages to these sites.
This includes the “commercial value of the resource, the scientific value of the resource, and the cost of restoration and repair.”
According to the indictments, the Wades allegedly stockpiled dinosaur bones to sell at gem and mineral shows to national vendors and to sell to a private company to export to China.
To avoid detection by federal agents, the defendants allegedly mislabeled the dinosaur bones and deflated their value.
“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 on federal land,” said U.S. Attorney Trina A. Higgins in a press release.
Bureau of Land Management Utah (BLM) State Director Gregory Sheehan added, “Southeastern Utah is a well-known destination for visitors to experience paleontology on the landscape.
“The public deserves the opportunity to benefit from and appreciate prehistoric resources on the lands.”
Only a fraction of the organisms that have ever lived are preserved as fossils, adding to their rarity and scientific and educational value, said BLM Utah Communications Director Christina Judd.
The PRPA of 2009 recognizes this fact and provides for criminal and civil penalties for the “unauthorized collection of paleontological resources,” she said.
While it’s legal to collect fossils on private and some state lands, the BLM and U.S. Forest Service allow the collecting of “limited amounts of non-vertebrate fossils” on federal lands, Ms. Judd told The Epoch Times.
But illegal fossil collecting on public lands “continues to be a problem,” she said.
Mr. Kirkland said the problem stems from the demand for dinosaur bones and fossils in various commercial forms.
Often, truckloads of stolen bones and fossils end up as jewelry, souvenirs, and trinkets sold in U.S. markets.
“The sites that have been hit, as I understand it, are the upper Jurassic [period],” Mr. Kirkland said. “It’s our most famous dinosaur level.
“Much of the bone has been mineralized with some colorful silica or agate. It’s like petrified wood is in Arizona—it’s beautiful. You cut it and make jewelry out of it. They’ve confiscated dump truckloads of dinosaur bones” used for that purpose.
He said the estimated commercial value for stolen dinosaur bones and fossils is millions.
“These folks are buying up the materials. They’re sending them to China—they’re not selling it to China. They’re having the bones modified in China to sell as gift shop items” in the United States.
At one retail store selling fossils in Moab, Utah, about 50 miles west of the Morrison Formation, a petrified wood log sold for nearly $6,000. A fossil dragonfly was on sale for almost $1,000.
The illegal market in fossils can fetch much higher prices—$48,000 for a dinosaur skeleton in one case, Mr. Kirkland said.
“It’s not just dinosaurs. We have the best trilobite [an extinct marine arthropod] record. There’s an international illegal trade of trilobites almost as big. It’s easier to smuggle out because it’s smaller.”
“This country is so open. You can’t just stand there and say, ‘Don’t do this.’ There are not enough people to protect it. Once they destroy the place—literally, you can’t fix these things.”
Once the stolen fossils have been cut up or modified, there is nothing anyone can do to repair the damage.
“All the context has been taken out of them. It’s a pretty immense loss. So much of the work has focused [in Utah]. You lose all this data.
“The public often doesn’t realize what it all means,” said Mr. Kirkland, who feels a solution is to convert fossil sites into “interpretive” locations open to the public.
A proposal to turn Fossil Point into such an interpretive site in 2020 included kiosks, parking, and other amenities.
At the very least, it would help to keep thieves away with better surveillance, Mr. Kirkland said.
“We need to interpret sites and have more people in the area that are tied to interpretation and know what they’re doing,” he said.
“People can make money leading guided trips. My view is if you use it, you’re not likely to lose it.”
