Paleontica Community

Uiteraard getekend! Ik als Eifelmeukverzamelaar ben niet zo kapot van dit wetsvoorstel .

Just signed it ! Lots of greetings to Soenke !!

Just signed it ! Lots of greetings to Soenke !!

As a kid, I started collecting fossils from the Carboniferous of the Dutch coalmines, from the Jurassic of Southern France and later only from the Maastrichtian type locality, I soon realized that collecting fossils was not only about acquiring beautiful specimen, but also about contributing to our common knowledge of the past, our heritage. I think that fossils have their full value only when provided with detailed information about the context in which they occur. Unless, they are prone to destruction, like in quarries or along certain seashores; I think it is best to leave them in their natural habitat, the sediments in which they are preserved. When collected, then with precise information on the date, locality, sedimentology and stratigraphy. Unfortunately, most fossils are orphaned, prepared out of context, exchanged for money, traded all over the world and finally too often found anonymous and quite worthless in dusty boxes once the beauty is out of the eye of their beholders. That is why I, had no problem restricting collection to quarries within the boundaries of my region, administered my collection meticulously, never bought, sold or exchanged anything and finally handed everything to the Museum of Natural History of Maastricht. Finally, I left fossil hunting to become a scientist and find out that it is the information about, rather than the possession of, our fossils and minerals that leads to a greater understanding for all of us. Fossils and minerals are not renewable like flora and fauna, and can get even faster extinct when excessively traded.

Petition signed.
I also posted the petition on several facebook groups.
The message has also been spread on the fossil forum.

Greetings

Jeroen

Gisteren ook getekend.

@Hans Zijlstra
Understood. However, you can also achieve this by protecting acces to sites of special interest. A general collecting ban is disproportional in my opinion for the following reasons:

- it disregards sites with natural erosion (as mentioned by you);
- it disregards the fact that amateurs contribute greatly to the scientific knowledge;
- professionals only have limited time and funds to collect;
- a ban is unenforcable; authorities have more important things to do;
- a ban will therefor not stop collectors but will lead to non-disclosure of possible scientific interesting finds for fear of prosecution;
- it does not contribute to the promotion of paleontology;
- it takes away the pleasure and fun from a lot a people.


NB I like to point put that I do not know the details of the German proposal, maybe it's less strict than imagined by me.

[Bewerkt door sjaak op 28-10-2015 om 13:44 NL]

Het meeste cultureel erfgoed dat uit de grond getrokken wordt, is gevonden door amateur paleontologen. Dus gaat er dan niet ook een hoop erfgoed verloren als er helemaal niet meer gezocht kan worden? Er zal dan veel minder bijzonders gevonden worden dan nu!

hallo,

ik wil wel tekenen, maar is het verplicht je adres te geven.

Hello together,

thank you for your solidarity in the name of the German fossil scene!

I am totally with sjaak: collectors (scientists and also most of the merchants) rescue fossils from erosion in the field and destruction in quarries. Most are willing to contribute to science (and some are very knowledgeable on their specific hunting grounds) and it is far better to have them in a private collection as if they get highway stones. So normal collecting needs no further restrictions, despite of some rules for fossils of a really high scientific value mass fossils don´t have.

A new law needs to differentiante definitively good between archaeology and palaeontology. It is not senseful to combine those completely different things into one law and to only ask archaeologists what they think about. I think, the archaeologists don´t really want fossil hunting to be restricted, their problem is illicit digging of artefacts.

We have also the support of German palaeontologists for the petition, who weren´t asked by the legislator before publication of the draft (other than the mentioned archaeologists etc.).

@torvosaurus
You may mark the field "Anonym bleiben". It is not necessary to give a e-mail address.
Take also a look at the text under the "Sign"-Button "How do we protect your data": https://www.openpetition.de/petition/on ... en_GB.utf8

Best wishes and thank you all - there have come a lot of votes from the Netherlands in the last hours - I am sure this were you!

Soenke