The Guardian view on the export of fossils: they deserve national treasure status | Editorial

As Sir David Attenborough has observed, “there’s nothing more magical than finding a shiny shell and knowing you’re the first person to have seen it for 150 million years”. Senior museum figures are campaigning for fossils to be classed as national treasures, according to the Waverley criteria, which control the export of objects considered culturally important to the nation. But the rules only cover natural treasures that are “made”, excluding fossils.

These calls come after a private collection from the Jurassic Coast was sold to the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi for a reported eight-figure sum. Both the Natural History Museum in London and Amgueddfa Cymru (Museum Wales) were offered the 318 fossils, but they didn’t have the funds. Unlike countries such as Brazil and Mongolia, where fossils belong to the state, Britain relies largely on a voluntary code of conduct.

The line between fossils as scientific specimens and fossils as aesthetic objects is becoming increasingly blurred – and their value is rocketing accordingly. Where once Damien Hirst’s shark made waves on the contemporary art scene, a dinosaur fossil appeared at London’s Frieze Masters in 2023. Last month, a 67m-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil called Gus broke records at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. He toppled Apex, a stegosaurus bought by an American hedge fund manager in 2024, now on loan to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and Stan, another T rex, was also acquired by the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi in 2022.

Big beasts of Hollywood have also got in on the act, with Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio battling it out for a fossil. Today’s dinomania has everyone from tech giants to TikTokers in its grip. But there is nothing new about fossil collecting. Mary Anning, a cabinetmaker’s daughter born in Lyme Regis in 1799, was one the UK’s greatest palaeontologists, although, as a woman, she was not allowed to join the Geological Society of London. Her life story inspired Tracy Chevalier’s 2009 novel Remarkable Creatures and the 2020 film Ammonite.

The Victorian passion for palaeontology provides the backdrop to the clandestine love stories in John Fowles’s French Lieutenant’s Woman (also set in Lyme Regis) and AS Byatt’s Possession. Fossils have provided a rich seam for writers and film‑makers from Tennyson (an enthusiastic collector on the Isle of Wight) to Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 children’s classic Ballet Shoes starring the foundling Fossil sisters, to Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park blockbusters. Last year’s Jurassic World Reborn has been credited with contributing to the recent collecting boom.

Fossils and dinosaurs are a source of childhood wonder. These long-dead specimens speak to us across millions of years. But they also hold important clues to the future, recording changing ecosystems, climate and biodiversity, providing vital evidence in the environmental emergency.

Without private hunters, many of these discoveries would not be made, especially in rapidly eroding landscapes like the Jurassic Coast. These collections are better in a museum, even if it is abroad. And the UK has no shortage of fossils from other countries. But measures to protect them are overdue. Important fossils should not be allowed to disappear into the collections of the super-rich. They should be accessible for scientists to study and the public to enjoy for hundreds of years to come. They are national treasures and deserve to be treated as such.

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