Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe.
Speaker 3: Joe.
Speaker 2: When you were a kid or do your children now?
Speaker 2: Are they into dinosaurs? Did you go through a dinosaur?
Speaker 4: F Absolutely?
Speaker 1: I love dinosaurs as a kid. My kids are, of
Speaker 1: course into dinosaurs. They're really into not only dinosaurs, but
Speaker 1: telling me which prehistoric animals aren't dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: So wait, does this come up a lot in conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I'm a troll to them. So I'll be like,
Speaker 1: what's your favorite note No, but I'll say things like
Speaker 1: what's your favorite dinosaur? Mine's the pterodactyl. And then my
Speaker 1: daughter rolls her eyes like, Dad, pterodactyl is not technically
Speaker 1: a dinastas.
Speaker 2: Wait is that true? I do not know that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Wait, explain it's something I don't understand it. Apparently,
Speaker 1: it's like, it's just it's not technically a dinosaur. It's
Speaker 1: a prehistoric animal of some different nature that is technically
Speaker 1: not a look it up, all right, Well, look it up.
Speaker 2: Learn something new every day.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of you know what, I'm gonna sound like
Speaker 1: a crank here I'm not a flat earther, but I'm like,
Speaker 1: sort of, I'm skeptical of dinosaurs. I'm surely existed, and
Speaker 1: I know we have fossil records of them. But here's
Speaker 1: what I don't get. Okay, and I know this isn't
Speaker 1: technically the topic, but I'm just so, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we had all these animals and they're really crazy looking,
Speaker 1: these big beasts, and they sort of look like dragons
Speaker 1: in some cases, or lizards or gigantic and then they
Speaker 1: all went extinct for some reason, prior media or something,
Speaker 1: and then evolution started again. We got a new set,
Speaker 1: and the new animals don't look anything like the dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: Buying a sure, chickens look like little dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Come on, No, they don't. I'm sorry, they don't. They don't.
Speaker 1: They don't. They don't. I've seen what I've seen Jurassic Park,
Speaker 1: I've been to the museum. I love looking at the
Speaker 1: fossil records. I know what chickens look like.
Speaker 2: No, chickens have a total reptilian vibe. You can see it.
Speaker 1: I disagree.
Speaker 2: All right, Okay, so this podcast is going to be a.
Speaker 1: Tyrannosaurs like, there's nothing that looks like a tyrannosaurus. There's
Speaker 1: nothing that looks like a brontosaurus.
Speaker 2: Strong disagree. A lot of birds look like t rexes.
Speaker 4: Okay, oh this is.
Speaker 1: The other thing that look Oh there were birds. They
Speaker 1: actually had feathers. That's certainly not how they're depicted in
Speaker 1: like a lot of well when you were growing up,
Speaker 1: A lot of birds look like t rexes. What, yes,
Speaker 1: No they don't. They do, No, they don't.
Speaker 2: Okay, this could be sixty minutes of Joe and I
Speaker 2: arguing bird looks like at t rex what it does?
Speaker 4: Come on, you need to.
Speaker 2: Look at more birds. That's your problem, okay, rather than
Speaker 2: than us. Keep going with this. Uh, We're going to
Speaker 2: talk about a market and interesting market, a market that
Speaker 2: unusually for nowadays is actually going up. And is it records.
Speaker 2: And that is the fossil market, the dinosaur fossil market.
Speaker 1: Okay, now this I'm very interested. I believe that. Now
Speaker 1: I have your I believe that fossils exist.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm glad we have stablish it.
Speaker 1: I'm also like, you know, I actually was at a
Speaker 1: dinner once and I met someone who is a commercial
Speaker 1: fossil pursuer, hunter, collector, whatever, sounds like they're they're worth
Speaker 1: quite a bit of money, or they can be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So every once in a while, every once in
Speaker 2: a while you see these headlines like, you know, a
Speaker 2: new set of fossils or a new set of bones
Speaker 2: sold for a record price. So the one that jumps
Speaker 2: out at me because it has a finance angle is
Speaker 2: Ken Griffin buying a Stegosaurs skeleton for I think something
Speaker 2: like forty five million dollars A couple of years back.
Speaker 2: I think that was the most expensive fossil ever sold.
Speaker 2: But anecdotally, some of the things I've been reading or
Speaker 2: saying that fossils are becoming more of a thing. You know,
Speaker 2: once you get to a certain level of wealth, I
Speaker 2: guess you get into art, or you get into antiquities,
Speaker 2: or nowadays maybe you get into dinosaur bones.
Speaker 1: There's a one of the really fancy South Beach hotels.
Speaker 1: They have a big full I forget which dina, a
Speaker 1: big dinosaur thing in their lobby. And I think even
Speaker 1: like gold plated the or something it looks absolutely.
Speaker 2: Like is there a real fossil that I think?
Speaker 1: So like ostentatiously Miami or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh wow, Okay, if I had a lot.
Speaker 1: Of money, and I was done collecting art, and it
Speaker 1: was done collecting mirror books. Maybe I'd move on to dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: I should just say this, this podcast is not just
Speaker 2: of interest to people that have millions of dollars to
Speaker 2: spend on dinosaur fossils. It is also an interesting market
Speaker 2: structure and question and sourcing scenario. I guess, because, as
Speaker 2: you say, there are commercial dinosaur hunters out there, but
Speaker 2: there are also a lot of regulations around what you
Speaker 2: can and cannot sell. There are also a lot of,
Speaker 2: you know, ethical questions that come up. Should these be
Speaker 2: in museums or should they be gold plated in a
Speaker 2: Miami lobby somewhere?
Speaker 1: You know what else? Is something interesting. I just looked
Speaker 1: on the terminal and right now, dinosaur future fossils are
Speaker 1: in backwardation. What no, I I made that dinosaur future.
Speaker 1: There's certainly not a futures curve I made that of
Speaker 1: Oh my.
Speaker 2: God, I was actually really excited.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just pure fabrication.
Speaker 2: We should we should request it, Okay, all right? Without
Speaker 2: further ado, I am pleased to say we do, in
Speaker 2: fact have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking
Speaker 2: with Salomon Aaron he has a director at David Erin,
Speaker 2: which is a London based antiquities, Islamic art and dinosaur
Speaker 2: fossil gallery. So someone who actually buys and sells fossils
Speaker 2: for a living. So so thank you so much for
Speaker 2: coming on our thoughts.
Speaker 4: My pleasure. It's lovely to be with you both and
Speaker 4: to have this conversation.
Speaker 2: So maybe just to situate ourselves, is the fossil market
Speaker 2: similar to the art market or the antiquities market? Is
Speaker 2: it different in some way? Like, give us some comparatives
Speaker 2: as we think through dinosaur fossils as an asset.
Speaker 4: Class with pleasure. Would you mind if I give a
Speaker 4: bit of context and just build up to the present.
Speaker 4: Of course, of course the dinosaur fossil market is starting
Speaker 4: to resemble other areas of the art market, but it's
Speaker 4: still quite a distance from that point. The principal reason
Speaker 4: being that it's a very underdeveloped, recent, recently growing and
Speaker 4: attracting interest market. It's not it doesn't have the depth
Speaker 4: of kind of research, market, market parallels, pricing comps that
Speaker 4: the other areas of the art market does, and all
Speaker 4: of the rules relating to how you deal in dinosaur
Speaker 4: forces are still being hammered out kind of which we
Speaker 4: can delve into, kind of condition, authenticity, attribution, provenance. All
Speaker 4: of these things are still developing. And so it's true
Speaker 4: that the market has been booming over the past ten years,
Speaker 4: but I think that's changing in a way. As the
Speaker 4: market slightly matures, hopefully there's going to be a kind
Speaker 4: of a flight to quality and much more differentiation between
Speaker 4: kind of the great dinosaur fossils that deserve and are
Speaker 4: finally getting that, you know, the recognition, and others which
Speaker 4: shouldn't be. So it's I don't know if that in
Speaker 4: many ways kind of answers your question.
Speaker 1: No, that's that's a great place to start. So when
Speaker 1: we think about the broad universe of let's just start
Speaker 1: with the universe of fossils rather than collective fossils. Do
Speaker 1: we have a sense of like how many are in museums,
Speaker 1: private collections, et cetera. And how much is still in
Speaker 1: the ground yet to be found.
Speaker 4: So I can't accurately answer that question because I don't
Speaker 4: think anybody really really knows what's still left to be discovered.
Speaker 4: I imagine that, you know, we're kind of at the tip
Speaker 4: of the.
Speaker 1: Iceberg, and in terms of discovery.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely. The issue with kind of why more isn't
Speaker 4: discovered is it's extremely time and kind of labor intensive
Speaker 4: to discover a dinosaur. You know, you need to be
Speaker 4: able to excavate at a certain time of the year.
Speaker 4: It requires a lot of manpower. It's a financial risk
Speaker 4: because you know, there are dinosaur explorers that will go,
Speaker 4: you know, a whole dig season looking for something and
Speaker 4: come up with nothing, and as a result, you know
Speaker 4: what's happened is as the market has exploded over the
Speaker 4: past ten years, it's becoming much more financially feasible for
Speaker 4: people to kind of look for dinosaurs and to bring
Speaker 4: things to the market. So that kind of the rising
Speaker 4: prices are hugely increasing the supply of dinosaur fossils. Because
Speaker 4: it may have been in the past if someone had
Speaker 4: discovered kind of elements of a particular species or a specimen,
Speaker 4: they'd say, Okay, based on the numbers, this isn't worth
Speaker 4: me spending the rest of my dig season trying to
Speaker 4: uncover the rest of this. But as the numbers go up,
Speaker 4: it all becomes more feasible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So on this note, walk us through a sort
Speaker 2: of canonical example I got of a dinosaur fossil being discovered,
Speaker 2: like who actually funds this expedition, who goes out and
Speaker 2: tries to find it, and then what happens once they do.
Speaker 4: Okay, So the rules relating to how and where you
Speaker 4: find a dinosaur fossil very dependent on country. We only
Speaker 4: deal in American dinosaur fossils because the rules are very clear.
Speaker 4: If you find a dinosaur fossil on private land, you
Speaker 4: can legally sell it as long as you have the
Speaker 4: permission of all parties, the landowner, the dinosaur hunter, et cetera.
Speaker 4: In other countries it's more shady. They might have exceptions.
Speaker 4: You might be able to get export permits. But you know,
Speaker 4: I'd not recommend anybody to kind of get involved or
Speaker 4: kind of do that. I just suggest focus on American
Speaker 4: dinosaur fossils, so to talk you through the process or
Speaker 4: how it works with us as a gallery, we're a
Speaker 4: retail gallery. We will work with landowners and dinosaur explorers
Speaker 4: who will kind of go out, you know, in Wyoming
Speaker 4: or in Montana or South Dakota or wherever that may be,
Speaker 4: look for dinosaur fossils and call us or email us
Speaker 4: when they have kind of images of bones as soon
Speaker 4: as they're discovered. And the way it works is, in
Speaker 4: some cases it's the landowner who is entering into agreements
Speaker 4: with a dinosaur hunter, for example, to split profit. In
Speaker 4: some cases it's kind of commercial dinosaur dealers who will
Speaker 4: acquire ranches or land hoping to kind of for the
Speaker 4: purpose of finding dinosaur fossils on that property. And least
Speaker 4: often is you might buy something from a private collector
Speaker 4: who bought it decades ago on the market himself. We
Speaker 4: very rarely do that because the rules relating to provenance
Speaker 4: have changed so drastically that it's unlikely that somebody who
Speaker 4: offered a dinosaur for sale a long period of time
Speaker 4: decades ago will have all of the paperwork we would
Speaker 4: want to see today to if you're cotable with being
Speaker 4: able to offer it to privates or to museums.
Speaker 1: What are the rules of provence?
Speaker 4: As I said, the rules have been developing, and different
Speaker 4: dealers will kind of require different amounts of due diligence.
Speaker 4: But obviously, the more certainty you have that you know
Speaker 4: you know exactly where and when and by whom with
Speaker 4: what permissions a dinosaur fossil is discovered, the more confidence
Speaker 4: you have as a buyer. So for example, we will
Speaker 4: insist on GPS coordinates. We will need to see land
Speaker 4: deeds showing that whoever owns it proves their legal title
Speaker 4: GPS coordinates. As it's discovered, we'll need to have copies
Speaker 4: of the sale arrangements between the dinosaur hunter and the landowner.
Speaker 4: We'll need to see ideally, when it's an important dinosaur fossil,
Speaker 4: I like to see videos kind of as the piece
Speaker 4: in situ, you know, in real time, is being discovered,
Speaker 4: so I know that bones aren't being added, you know.
Speaker 4: We'll want to have kind of coroberating statements from everyone
Speaker 4: on the site explaining what's been found. Will want to
Speaker 4: send experts to the location or visit ourselves to kind
Speaker 4: of verify everything as it's being excavated. So all of
Speaker 4: that is kind of helps to build a picture of
Speaker 4: where you have complete certainty over when, where, how, and
Speaker 4: you know in whose property the piece the fossil was discovered.
Speaker 4: If you kind of rewind fifteen twenty years ago, dinosaur
Speaker 4: fossils may have been exchanging hands where you might just
Speaker 4: have a signed statement from someone saying I found this
Speaker 4: on my property at you know, fifteen Oak Hill Road
Speaker 4: or whatever, but you know, as the numbers have increased,
Speaker 4: And also kind of just a bit of background, we're
Speaker 4: an ancient art or antiquities gallery and we deal in
Speaker 4: Islamic card and we entered the dinosaur fossil market effectively
Speaker 4: trying to use the you know, the due diligence rules
Speaker 4: in those categories and apply them to the dinosaur fossil market.
Speaker 4: So my original background is and my kind of my
Speaker 4: family's background are antiquities dealers, where we when we buy
Speaker 4: an artwork or a Roman marble, we need to be
Speaker 4: clear about its provenance, you know, where, how did it
Speaker 4: enter the market? What proof is that it legally left
Speaker 4: its country of origin? And unless we're able to show
Speaker 4: that conclusively with proof, then a buyer or a museum
Speaker 4: doesn't really have the ultimate security that the piece is
Speaker 4: legally on the market. So we developed their own internal
Speaker 4: ways of kind of really a kind of checklist for
Speaker 4: a for a specimen to make us feel comfortable that
Speaker 4: it's legal and it's on the sale on the market
Speaker 4: legally with no kind of issues relating to its title.
Speaker 4: Does that kind of build a picture of.
Speaker 3: What you need?
Speaker 4: Yeahstely to buy a dinosaur bustle.
Speaker 2: Do you do third party testing at all, like thermolo
Speaker 2: lessons testing for age very pick and things like that,
Speaker 2: or do you not really need it once you have
Speaker 2: all the provenance evidence to back it.
Speaker 4: Up case dependent. But what we really want to do
Speaker 4: is we try, wherever possible to arrange independent third party
Speaker 4: consultants or paleontologists or specialists to look at the specimen
Speaker 4: before we offer it for sale, and ideally a paleontologist
Speaker 4: who specializes in that particular species. So, for example, we
Speaker 4: recently sold a Jurassic skeleton which was one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty million years old, and we kind of reached out
Speaker 4: to the best person in that category and said, could
Speaker 4: you just review the images? What does this look like
Speaker 4: to you? And what we also do is arrange conservators
Speaker 4: to well from the art background, to come and check
Speaker 4: that the bones that we are assembling are reflected accurately
Speaker 4: on a bone map. And that's something else that I
Speaker 4: think we'll probably get into, is you know, how do
Speaker 4: you know what you're buying? Because dinosaur fossils aren't discovered
Speaker 4: completely intact, virtually never discovered completely intact. They are assembled
Speaker 4: from what is to discovered and then that's mixed in
Speaker 4: with resin parts or three D printed bones to complete
Speaker 4: the specimen, et cetera. And so anybody buying a dinosaur
Speaker 4: fossil needs to know what they're buying, and that's something
Speaker 4: you know. Again, the market is developing over the past
Speaker 4: fifteen twenty years because it used to be that, well
Speaker 4: actually it still is today that if you walk into
Speaker 4: a fossil shop and you say, well, how much of
Speaker 4: what I'm buying is real bone and how much of
Speaker 4: it is fake bone, they'll show you a kind of
Speaker 4: a color book, a drawing of all the bones, and
Speaker 4: if an element of that bone is present, they'll say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: we have you know, we have the fibula, we have
Speaker 4: the vertebrae, we have whatever it is, we have this claw.
Speaker 4: And actually it could be very misleading because you might
Speaker 4: actually have five percent of that particular bone. And as
Speaker 4: a result, a item that looks very complete on a
Speaker 4: bone map is actually incredibly incomplete. So not only do
Speaker 4: we we kind of insist on having paid intelligence specialists
Speaker 4: check that you know, this is the special when we're
Speaker 4: describing it's being attributed correctly, but also we'll have conservators
Speaker 4: actually draw up a bone map which as a gallery,
Speaker 4: we've designed to show what percentage of each bone is there.
Speaker 4: And that's one of the kind of issues with the
Speaker 4: dinosaur fossil market is that, you know, somebody could very
Speaker 4: easily snap a bone in half and kind of double
Speaker 4: its quote unquote completeness in that bone map kind of process.
Speaker 4: And so when you asked, your first question was, you know,
Speaker 4: how does this compare or contrast with other areas of
Speaker 4: the art market. There isn't the same depth of kind
Speaker 4: of art consultants, advisory firms, etcetera that are increasing the
Speaker 4: pressure on vendors to try to keep all kind of
Speaker 4: for example, art fares. You know, if you are a
Speaker 4: art gallery and you want to exhibit at the best
Speaker 4: art fairs in the world, there are certain vetting requirements
Speaker 4: you need to fulfill, and so the dinosaur market doesn't
Speaker 4: have that same level of scrutiny for now. As the
Speaker 4: numbers are increasing and there are kind of way more
Speaker 4: private collector is interested in acquiring and building private collections
Speaker 4: of dinosaur fossils, and also new museums being formed around
Speaker 4: the world. The market as a result is kind of
Speaker 4: developing new systems to be more transparent and also to
Speaker 4: better present completeness.
Speaker 1: Already very fascinating. Just real quick question on North American dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that a lot of the excavation or hunting
Speaker 1: work happens in Wyoming, North Dakota, et cetera. Is that
Speaker 1: because geographically we have reason to believe that there was
Speaker 1: a high density of fossils there. Or is it because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of land, Like if there's a dinosaunder
Speaker 1: in New York City, no one's looking for it, you
Speaker 1: can't dig it up. Is it just because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of land there that is diggable, that's not being
Speaker 1: used for anything else.
Speaker 4: I think it's one of the above. Ideally, there are
Speaker 4: climates that make it easier to dig in, like, for example,
Speaker 4: you can't dig when it's snowing. When it's too hot,
Speaker 4: it becomes quite difficult. Also, and you need that kind
Speaker 4: of churn of weather that that kind of mixes up
Speaker 4: the earth and makes it easier. It's all of the above.
Speaker 2: So the other thing I'm very curious about in all
Speaker 2: of this is the pricing of fossils, because, as you say,
Speaker 2: in many ways it's a new market for some very
Speaker 2: very old things. But if someone discovers a skeleton. And
Speaker 2: I take your point that you rarely discover a full skeleton.
Speaker 2: But let's say you discover something that's kind of unusual
Speaker 2: in that world, how do you even go about benchmarking
Speaker 2: it to an actual price that you can sell it for.
Speaker 4: It's a great question. So when my dad, for example,
Speaker 4: when we're discussing antiquities or Islamic car and we buy
Speaker 4: we acquire a new piece, will immediately sit down and
Speaker 4: my dad will say, this is exactly like the one
Speaker 4: that appeared in ninety eight at auction, This is exactly
Speaker 4: like the one that appears in this catalog in seventy two,
Speaker 4: and I saw one in power. You know that doesn't exist.
Speaker 4: And the issue with the dinosaur fossil well kit is
Speaker 4: that the prices, and I'll give you kind of concrete examples,
Speaker 4: is so all over the place, because take, for instance,
Speaker 4: which was kind of a shed moment in the dinosaur
Speaker 4: fossil market, which was the sale of Stand. It was
Speaker 4: a super complete, high profile, widely published, iconic t rex
Speaker 4: skeleton acquired by the Abu Dhabi Natural History Museum in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty or twenty twenty one at Christie's that made
Speaker 4: thirty one million dollars. The record for a dinosaur at
Speaker 4: auction prior to that was eight million dollars in the
Speaker 4: early two thousands, which was Sue, which was acquired by
Speaker 4: a consortium of companies and is now on permanent display
Speaker 4: in Chicago. So and probably after Sue, there was very
Speaker 4: few things that actually made eight million dollars up until
Speaker 4: Stan and after stand the prices exploded and Christie's and
Speaker 4: Southeby started recurringly consigning major dinosaur fossils for sale, and
Speaker 4: actually there was no logic to why they were so
Speaker 4: cheap prior to that sale. You know, a lot of
Speaker 4: it was to do with the lack of visibility that
Speaker 4: people didn't know you could acquire dinosaur fossils. And what
Speaker 4: happened with our gallery specifically was we were the first
Speaker 4: commercial art gallery to actually start exhibiting dinosaur fossils as
Speaker 4: an art form add an art fair. So we acquired
Speaker 4: our dinosaur fossils, we applied art market due diligence to
Speaker 4: the acquisition, art market kind of condition, reporting to the
Speaker 4: condition and the preservation, created bespoke art market minimalist stands
Speaker 4: for the pieces, and then showed them at art fairs
Speaker 4: and a lot of people would come up to us
Speaker 4: and say, I did not know you could buy a
Speaker 4: t Rex. I did not know you could buy a
Speaker 4: Triceratops skull. And what the auction houses did was kind
Speaker 4: of pump these items into the news and into auctions,
Speaker 4: and then a whole generation of tech bros and private
Speaker 4: collectors kind of descended on the market with advisors and
Speaker 4: kind of that contributed to the explosion in prices. So
Speaker 4: to give you an example specifically, you know, there was
Speaker 4: a complete Triceratops scale a skeleton that sold around twenty
Speaker 4: twenty two, twenty twenty three, don't quote me on the
Speaker 4: exact date, but big job in Paris, which made kind
Speaker 4: of circle eight million dollars. The prior record for a
Speaker 4: Triteretops skeleton was I mean, I don't know of any
Speaker 4: that made more than a million at public auction. I
Speaker 4: know that Christie's had one that went unsold for half
Speaker 4: a million dollars ten plus years earlier. So the price
Speaker 4: jumps have been extraordinary. And there are many other examples
Speaker 4: like that where you know, since Stan we've had you know, Hector,
Speaker 4: we had a Raptor that made kind of twelve thirteen
Speaker 4: million pounds. We've had this best, the Apex, which was
Speaker 4: brought by Kin Griffin, made forty five million. We had
Speaker 4: the last other specimen made thirty seven million, And these
Speaker 4: are all numbers which are unheard of in the dinosaur
Speaker 4: fossil market. So, and the issue is that a lot
Speaker 4: of these specimens are being either consigned by kind of
Speaker 4: primary dinosaur hunters or landowners to auction, and then once
Speaker 4: they've kind of made this sale, it's very difficult for
Speaker 4: them to then sell something at the prior prices, you know,
Speaker 4: five ten years prior. So yeah, that's kind of gives
Speaker 4: you a bit of context about the complete change in
Speaker 4: pricing structure in this industry.
Speaker 1: So I take it that finding a complete skeleton is rare?
Speaker 1: Is there a lot of transaction activity? And just like
Speaker 1: you know, here's a fumur, here's a foot, here's a
Speaker 1: here's a nose, Like is that the.
Speaker 2: More so unimpressed? I'd be so excited about a dinosaurs?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure too, But like, are there a lot
Speaker 1: of transaction or do you like, let's say you have
Speaker 1: part of a skull, like do you weigh and it's
Speaker 1: like maybe we can find some more and like build something,
Speaker 1: and also is there like is it legitimate in your
Speaker 1: space to create an assemblage. It's like we have a
Speaker 1: complete X, but it's from five different dinosaurs, but it
Speaker 1: is all dinosaur bones. We put them together, Like are
Speaker 1: is there anything going on like that?
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, all good questions. I mean we so
Speaker 4: as a gallery, our business model is to deal in
Speaker 4: very few but you know, the very best, and not
Speaker 4: to sell composits and to sell fragments, but only when
Speaker 4: they're kind of I think esthetic or beautiful or kind
Speaker 4: of historically interesting. But there are loads of sellers for
Speaker 4: the cheaper part of cheaper kind of smaller bones, and
Speaker 4: that's a huge market. You can go to mineral shows
Speaker 4: and you can buy teeth in the hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 4: You can also buy very much cheaper if you buy
Speaker 4: non American dinosaur fossils. And there are dealers that will
Speaker 4: sell composits, and everybody will take a kind of commercial
Speaker 4: decision on whether to assemble something or sell it as
Speaker 4: a fragment. I prefer we're possible to kind of not
Speaker 4: over restore so that you don't look at something and say,
Speaker 4: I have a you know something which in bone mass
Speaker 4: or sorry, in mass is kind of twenty percent original,
Speaker 4: eighty percent resin. I'd rather show a fragment. But yeah,
Speaker 4: look I can tell you I personally have I have
Speaker 4: a triceraotops horn at home. I have a couple of
Speaker 4: t rex teeth at home, so I think they're core.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at your website. Yeah, there's a tract or
Speaker 1: possibly gore gossairis I never heard of that dinosaur tooth
Speaker 1: for sale for eighty five hundred pounds. Yeah, seems affordable.
Speaker 4: Well you'd get a discount as well.
Speaker 2: Next time we're in London.
Speaker 1: Jet it's a nice big tooth. It looks nice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but we're not sure and that one which of
Speaker 4: the two it is, so we kind of cautious.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, just to Joe's question, could I make Could I
Speaker 2: make a living basically being a dinosaur fossil assemblage person
Speaker 2: and then just charging a massive markup as I sort
Speaker 2: of collect various bones and try to create a fully
Speaker 2: formed skeleton.
Speaker 4: Yes, and no, Because this is the thing about the
Speaker 4: market maturing, is that, strictly speaking, you know, private collectors
Speaker 4: should be a and they should be kind of not
Speaker 4: acquiring things unless they know for certain that they've been
Speaker 4: assembled correctly, they are original to the piece, and you
Speaker 4: know you aren't taking composites. But in recent years, because
Speaker 4: the market has kind of had so much demand, there
Speaker 4: are people who have acquired pieces that maybe should not
Speaker 4: have done, or paid prices they shouldn't have done. But
Speaker 4: that's something I expect to decrease with time because of
Speaker 4: the increased scrutiny that is, you know, should be coming
Speaker 4: into these fossils as a result of kind of the
Speaker 4: higher numbers. Yeah, and then the other thing to say
Speaker 4: is that it's very competitive. Like you, if you want
Speaker 4: to buy a great dinosaur fossil today, you can't just
Speaker 4: you know, go down a promenade of galleries and you
Speaker 4: know you can walk in and say, oh, I'd like
Speaker 4: to buy a t rex. Could you show me what's
Speaker 4: you know behind the curtain that doesn't exist? I mean,
Speaker 4: if you want to buy an amazing dinosaur fossil, you
Speaker 4: know you're looking at having to kind of pre buy it,
Speaker 4: pre acquire it prior to prepping. So what we do
Speaker 4: with clients, for example, is a client recently I sold
Speaker 4: an amazing complete skeleton. It's either a Martialsaurus or it's
Speaker 4: a completely unknown new species to a private collector who
Speaker 4: wanted to have it go on public display. So it's
Speaker 4: being loaned to a the Colchester Museum in the UK.
Speaker 4: And it's kind of something that this private collector wants
Speaker 4: to be studied, and he wants it to be kind
Speaker 4: of made available to science. And I don't know if
Speaker 4: his plan at some point will be to donate it
Speaker 4: or to what his plans is, but he's a very
Speaker 4: kind of fillanpropic person. But in that scenario, what we
Speaker 4: had to do was I met the client years ago,
Speaker 4: we agreed on the strategy, which was to buy an
Speaker 4: amazing complete skeleton. Then I consistently sent the client kind
Speaker 4: of propositions of specimens as they were being discovered, and
Speaker 4: I said, listen, this has just been found. This is
Speaker 4: what's been found so far. This is how much the
Speaker 4: cut price is to the landowner. This is how much
Speaker 4: I envision it will cost to prep You need to
Speaker 4: pre buy this if you want this specimen, because by
Speaker 4: the time this is acquired and prepped and complete, I
Speaker 4: mean you're we're competing against the kind of sovereign wealth
Speaker 4: fund or kind of petro dollar States tech. It's just
Speaker 4: much more difficult souther Beast Christie's we'll never be able
Speaker 4: to get a price, and it might not be able
Speaker 4: to acquire it. So that's what people have to do
Speaker 4: to buy really great dinosaur fossils. Usually it's unusual for
Speaker 4: someone to be able to kind of walk in and
Speaker 4: buy something amazing at a kind of reasonable price.
Speaker 2: Actually that reminds me, but who's the archetypal buyer for
Speaker 2: these things? And has that shifted over time as the
Speaker 2: market becomes more prominent.
Speaker 4: I guess it has so as you could probably guess.
Speaker 4: It's very tech science heavy, so we have clients of
Speaker 4: all ages. But what's interesting is the dinosaur fossil clients
Speaker 4: are much younger than kind of the antiquities or Islamic
Speaker 4: art clients in general. It's a younger demographic and also,
Speaker 4: you know, really skew towards tech and science. It's a
Speaker 4: lot of people that grew up with Jurassic Park that
Speaker 4: find it amazing. I would also add that our gallery
Speaker 4: is very museum centric, so we try where possible to
Speaker 4: work with museums. So often, for example, where we can,
Speaker 4: and we always have, we give museums first rights on
Speaker 4: whatever we find. We consult museum scholars and curators, and
Speaker 4: also we've had where possible, Actually what we're doing in
Speaker 4: the dinosaur spaces we are introducing private collectors to museums,
Speaker 4: and we are helping museums acquire specimens by kind of
Speaker 4: you know, well finding the private donors to acquire the
Speaker 4: specimens for the museums. And we had a one of
Speaker 4: the ones because I know that you guys are going
Speaker 4: to touch on science and whether or not the private
Speaker 4: market kind of takes away from science and research. So
Speaker 4: just to kind of jump into that question.
Speaker 1: It's exactly where I was going to go next.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I imagined. So obviously it's very sad in
Speaker 4: some instances where as a result of the private trade,
Speaker 4: specimens are not available to museums or they might be
Speaker 4: lost to science. But as as a kind of commercial dealer,
Speaker 4: I do believe that on the balance, the public is
Speaker 4: better off for the private because of the private trade.
Speaker 4: As a result of kind of so many dinosaurs would
Speaker 4: not ordinarily be discovered if it were not for the
Speaker 4: private trade. And also we have we try where possible,
Speaker 4: and of course no one is perfect. We have managed
Speaker 4: to make privately discovered dinosaur fossils to be able to
Speaker 4: find their way to museums as a result of private buyers.
Speaker 4: So last year we had a high profile sale of
Speaker 4: a completely new species which we acquired. We showed to
Speaker 4: the Natural History Museum in the UK. They loved the specimen,
Speaker 4: they really wanted it. They said this would be a
Speaker 4: transformative piece for their collection, and then we placed it
Speaker 4: on kind of unconditional reserve for them and went out
Speaker 4: and tried to find a private buyer, and six to
Speaker 4: nine months later we found a private collector who agreed
Speaker 4: to acquire it for the museum and also make funds
Speaker 4: available for research. So that's an instance where because of
Speaker 4: the private trade, we've been able to do something good
Speaker 4: for kind of the public and for the museums that
Speaker 4: we work with.
Speaker 1: That makes a ton of sense, of course, the fact
Speaker 1: that if there's a lot of money in the space,
Speaker 1: then you elicit more discovery and then it's good for science, etc.
Speaker 1: Those agreements where it's like Okay, I buy a dinosaur
Speaker 1: and then I put it in a museum. Is there
Speaker 1: a time component? Can I ever take it back eventually?
Speaker 1: Like okay, I agree to places for ten years or
Speaker 1: two years or something, or am I expected to sort
Speaker 1: of permanently give it to the museum to.
Speaker 4: Hold it's case dependent. So are there are a lot
Speaker 4: of museums that will shy away or completely forbid interaction
Speaker 4: with the private market, and then there are some which
Speaker 4: are much more willing or excited to do so. And
Speaker 4: you know, I understand, I understand the sensitivities around it,
Speaker 4: but each museum is different. You know, there are many
Speaker 4: that will just not accept a loan full stop. But
Speaker 4: you have to kind of really try to build trust,
Speaker 4: and you know, for example, be very upfront with museum.
Speaker 4: I'm I'm arranging this loan not because I want to
Speaker 4: increase the value of the specimen so it can be
Speaker 4: sold at auction in three years time. And this is
Speaker 4: how I will make you feel comfortable. This is the
Speaker 4: private buyer. His plan is genuinely to donate it. And
Speaker 4: it's quite a it's quite an interesting opportunity really because
Speaker 4: as we entered the dinosaur fossil space, you know, we
Speaker 4: realize that, you know, when you visit an art museum,
Speaker 4: you look on the walls and you see kind of
Speaker 4: lines of art patrons, and when you visit the natural
Speaker 4: history museums, that doesn't really exist because there isn't that
Speaker 4: same ecosystem for kind of you know, patron groups of
Speaker 4: friends or collectors and and that because it's just a
Speaker 4: it's a it's a recently developing market. So hopefully, and
Speaker 4: of course, you know, like with every market, there's the
Speaker 4: benefits and the disadvantages that the market will kind of
Speaker 4: cultivate the next generation of patrons that will interact with museums.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know what Ken Griffin's plan is
Speaker 4: for APEX, but you know he's as as soon as
Speaker 4: he acquired as he acquired it, it's on public display
Speaker 4: in New York, and you know, I think everyone's kind
Speaker 4: of enjoying looking at it and visiting the museum, and
Speaker 4: I would imagine that maybe you know, that he's thinking
Speaker 4: in his mind that he's going to donate it or
Speaker 4: gift it at some point.
Speaker 2: Would you expect there to be more speculative interest in
Speaker 2: the market as it develops, because that's something we're very
Speaker 2: used to seeing in the art market, right someone buys
Speaker 2: a painting and thinks of it as an investment, not
Speaker 2: just something nice to hang on their wall. Are we
Speaker 2: going to start to see the same thing with dinosaur bones?
Speaker 4: I think we have seen that. People often come to
Speaker 4: us and say, okay, would you recommend? And I have
Speaker 4: it with friends friends. You know, when I meet my
Speaker 4: school friends, they always say, come on, sell, find me
Speaker 4: a bone. And I always say, it's kind of consistent.
Speaker 4: It's my best friends always I can't believe you've not
Speaker 4: found me at Triceratopscott And I always say, you you
Speaker 4: you can't. You can't buy as an investor. You have
Speaker 4: to buy because you love you love it. You you're
Speaker 4: kind of inspired by the history, by the you know,
Speaker 4: it's it's it is, it's or inspiring to stand in
Speaker 4: front of a kind of sixty six million years old
Speaker 4: creature that roam the earth and it's it's jaw dropping.
Speaker 4: But I don't I don't believe in kind of buying
Speaker 4: for speculative reasons because there are so many unknowns. You know.
Speaker 4: It might be that America, the US decides to kind
Speaker 4: of shut the private trade down and suddenly, you know,
Speaker 4: you may be one of the few people in the
Speaker 4: world with a trizeerotop skull and good condition, and suddenly
Speaker 4: it's worth a hundred times what you paid for it.
Speaker 4: It may be that actually property prices go up, and
Speaker 4: no one has the space for a dinosaur fossil in
Speaker 4: their home anymore. I mean, there's so many variables. There
Speaker 4: has been a lot of speculative buying, and you do
Speaker 4: see that with pieces that have been acquired at auction
Speaker 4: and then six months later or one year later, they're
Speaker 4: offered for sale again privately as soon as it as
Speaker 4: soon as the auction is finished. And that's not how
Speaker 4: the behavior of kind of a genuine collector who wants
Speaker 4: to acquire and live with something for decades I really
Speaker 4: don't enjoy. And I you know, working with people who
Speaker 4: have that that is their plan. You have to just
Speaker 4: trust that. You know, you do your research and your
Speaker 4: due diligence, and you acquire at the fair market value.
Speaker 4: Especially in this space, it's unreasonable and it should be
Speaker 4: kind of a massive red flag for someone to sell
Speaker 4: you something which is kind of under the prices of
Speaker 4: the current market because it's so competitive. All you can
Speaker 4: do is kind of acquire at a fair value with
Speaker 4: an honest description of what you're buying, with an understanding
Speaker 4: of exactly how good it is, how complete it is.
Speaker 4: And we can go into for example, what to look
Speaker 4: for when acquiring a dinosaur fossil, like, why, what gives
Speaker 4: it value?
Speaker 1: Great? Tell us?
Speaker 2: Wait, can I ask a question before you go into that?
Speaker 2: More generally, do bones from carnivores seem to have more
Speaker 2: value than bones from herbivores.
Speaker 4: Yes. People come to us and say, I want teeth,
Speaker 4: I want something scary, I want something that I can
Speaker 4: put in my home. You come around the corner and
Speaker 4: it gives you the fright of your life. Generally speaking,
Speaker 4: kind of various animals which are kind of meatita skeletons,
Speaker 4: t Rex, Gorgosaurus, Alisaurus, juvenile t Rex, juvenile Alisaurus, et cetera.
Speaker 4: They're way more sought after than very competitive. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, if I found a t rex skull in
Speaker 4: great condition, with all the bells and whistles, there's a
Speaker 4: q of five six people kind of waiting for it,
Speaker 4: ready to acquire it from an email photo, to send
Speaker 4: money in advance, waiting for it to come. Herbivores aren't
Speaker 4: as popular, but then again, the iconic herbival is, like
Speaker 4: a triceratops skull, is very popular. What I hope to happen.
Speaker 4: And this comes to value and where we distinguish ourselves
Speaker 4: from other dinosaur dealers. Is that I would hope that
Speaker 4: people kind of increasingly look at actually what they're buying,
Speaker 4: you know, not just the brand. Am I buying a
Speaker 4: t rex? Am I buying a Triceotops?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: Am I buying something that is colored on a document
Speaker 4: a bone map and described as being very complete. That's
Speaker 4: not how I would suggest anybody to deal in dinosaur fossils.
Speaker 4: You need to understand what is the kind of anticipated
Speaker 4: or the usual condition of that particular type of specimen.
Speaker 4: So some specimens are usually discovered much more complete than others,
Speaker 4: so you may buy For example, I saw the Nanosaurus skeleton,
Speaker 4: which is a small Jurassic skeleton about a meter and
Speaker 4: a half one hundred and fifty million years old. They're
Speaker 4: usually discovered very incomplete because they're very they're small, the
Speaker 4: bones are brittle. There are very few skulls that have
Speaker 4: ever been found. If you have a Nanosaurus skeleton that
Speaker 4: might have kind of fifty percent of the bones represented
Speaker 4: and some of the kind of feet, the claws, or
Speaker 4: the you know, they're then that's amazing. But fifty percent
Speaker 4: of a larger herbivore with kind of thick, durable bones
Speaker 4: like a triceratops is actually not as interesting or as exciting.
Speaker 4: And also it doesn't matter how many bones are there,
Speaker 4: but actually what are the key bones? You know, what
Speaker 4: are you looking for in value or in kind of
Speaker 4: historical interest. So t rex skull, Let's say you buy
Speaker 4: a t rex skull, but all the teeth are not original,
Speaker 4: you know, that's a pretty crazy thing to do. Or
Speaker 4: a triceratops skull, which is iconic because of its you know,
Speaker 4: it's the three horned dinosaur. It's got these amazing horns
Speaker 4: that you know, descend out of its send out of
Speaker 4: its skull. It doesn't matter how many parts, how much
Speaker 4: of the frill you have, or how much of the
Speaker 4: kind of lower jaw you have. What you want is
Speaker 4: you want. You need those horns to be there. And
Speaker 4: so what I think will happened over time is that
Speaker 4: holistically people will look at dinosa fossils and say, I
Speaker 4: don't care. It's not about is the branding is important,
Speaker 4: but it's more about you know what am I buying exactly?
Speaker 4: You know, forgetting how the industry used to work in
Speaker 4: the past, and actually kind of taking a much more measured, slower,
Speaker 4: deeper kind of investigatory kind of analysis as to what's
Speaker 4: complete and what's not complete, what's interesting in what's not complete.
Speaker 4: Sorry that I give you very long answers to each
Speaker 4: of your questions, But.
Speaker 1: No, no, this is there's so much information that it's
Speaker 1: totally fine. I actually want to go back to something
Speaker 1: you said, because when you think about market structure, you
Speaker 1: did say one thing that sort of feels familiar, perhaps,
Speaker 1: which is that you could get a better shot at
Speaker 1: acquiring something at a good price if you buy it
Speaker 1: a little bit earlier in the process, that by the
Speaker 1: time the dinosaur has been completely excavated and documented and assembled,
Speaker 1: et cetera, it's going to go to some you know,
Speaker 1: rich collector and the golf or something like that. Talk
Speaker 1: to us a little bit more. Some of these collectors
Speaker 1: or people who are waiting for that t rex skull
Speaker 1: or whatever. How early can they, if they're so inclined,
Speaker 1: get in on the process. Can they front money towards
Speaker 1: a paleontologist who has a good reason to think there
Speaker 1: might be something there? Can they, like, you know, can
Speaker 1: they buy a stake of an excavation project period, like
Speaker 1: for the active collector? Essentially, Yeah, that's yeah, that's right, VC,
Speaker 1: and some sort like buy a stake in the expedition.
Speaker 4: Yes, they do. I don't think a private collector should
Speaker 4: do that. Okay, I guess if you can and you
Speaker 4: have the money, and it's fun and it's kind of exciting,
Speaker 4: fair enough, But but I don't recommend someone to do
Speaker 4: it that way.
Speaker 1: How come very high risk.
Speaker 4: You may end up acquiring or finding a dinosaur skeleton
Speaker 4: that you actually don't have the space for, or you
Speaker 4: don't want, or is not what you ideally wanted. You know,
Speaker 4: very hard to manage. You know, if you're if you're
Speaker 4: sitting in New York or you're sitting in London, you
Speaker 4: need to trust that the team that you are working with.
Speaker 4: I mean, when they find a bone, how do you
Speaker 4: know they're not putting it in their pocket? You know?
Speaker 4: How how do you know your I mean we're talking
Speaker 4: about really remote places where you have no idea. You know,
Speaker 4: I had a you know. There are also all types
Speaker 4: of things, like there are situations where you know, you
Speaker 4: you acquire something and the seller holds back a couple
Speaker 4: of bones, and then six months later you get a
Speaker 4: phone call saying, by the way, I did find a
Speaker 4: couple other bones that you would really want to buy. Now,
Speaker 4: now I'm going to extort you for the Yeah, that's
Speaker 4: happened too many times to me. So yeah, I think
Speaker 4: I've as a dealer. I feel like I've aged disproportionately
Speaker 4: to my age. But but you need to kind of
Speaker 4: work with a small number of people you trust and
Speaker 4: try wherever possible because life is short to to kind
Speaker 4: of delegate the headache and the stress and the risk.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, is anyone working on bringing dinosaurs back
Speaker 1: to life.
Speaker 2: This would be the ultimate risk for the asset class.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right now we have new supplies of dinosaur bones.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I know that's sort of fantastical, right
Speaker 1: because of Jurassic Park. You know, may we're going to
Speaker 1: find a little bit of DNA and some amber somewhere.
Speaker 1: But it's not like like, wasn't there something they brought
Speaker 1: a wolf? There's some there was some cover of a
Speaker 1: magazine recently and they said, oh, this wolf that had
Speaker 1: gone extinct, we actually like brought it back somehow. Isn't
Speaker 1: there some work being done on science and reviving extinct species?
Speaker 4: I think there are. There are the obvious ethical issues
Speaker 4: of it. I mean, you know, when you once you
Speaker 4: open Pandora's box and you start kind of bringing back
Speaker 4: to life. You know, where does it endure? People always
Speaker 4: talking about I didn't think Elo Musk did a did
Speaker 4: a post recently about Jurassic Park. I mean, so, I'm
Speaker 4: sure it will happen in our lifetime. Whether it will
Speaker 4: be good, don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know we will Well, you're sure it will
Speaker 1: happen in our.
Speaker 4: Life, definitely, don't you think with the kind of advent
Speaker 4: of AI and are we going to be surrounded by
Speaker 4: dinosaurs in twenty years time? Yeah, the Bloomberg office headquarters
Speaker 4: is going to have triceratops roaming it.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is a I mean, this is a this
Speaker 1: is a big call. Yeah. I was expecting, particularly someone
Speaker 1: who's a pro, it's like, oh, yeah, this is just parks.
Speaker 4: If I had to be, I bet they're not going
Speaker 4: to They're not going to reappear.
Speaker 1: But you know, okay, but I'm just.
Speaker 2: Trying to certain they would They would not be as
Speaker 2: plentiful as to be in the Bloomberg office in our lifetimes.
Speaker 2: I'm sure of that. At least.
Speaker 1: You know, when you ask a little kid what they
Speaker 1: want to be, they either want to be, like, you know,
Speaker 1: a popular thing to be a paleontologist, and I can't
Speaker 1: imagine buying large. There's a lot of paleontology jobs. But
Speaker 1: given the trends, would you say this is becoming a
Speaker 1: more plausible career option If there's more money in the
Speaker 1: space and then more economic reason to find dinosaurs, could
Speaker 1: this be that maybe more kids get to live out
Speaker 1: their dreams of being a palaeontologist one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: If you imagine a lot of these private collectors will
Speaker 4: set up private museums, and I would go one step further.
Speaker 4: You know, that's exactly that underscores the interest in dinosaur
Speaker 4: fossils because and this is why we kind of pivoted
Speaker 4: to this this market. Because if you type into Google
Speaker 4: Modeliani or Jeff Coons and you look at the search results,
Speaker 4: the number of people who search have searched for Jeff
Speaker 4: Cuons or whatever, it's totally eclipsed by the search is
Speaker 4: for triceratops or a t rex. There's universal interest in
Speaker 4: these dinosaurs, and actually, whatever we do in art Fair,
Speaker 4: we're kind of inundated by children and by people of
Speaker 4: all ages who come up to us and say isn't
Speaker 4: that fifty million? Isn't that one hundred million? I say, no,
Speaker 4: it's it's actually half a million, or or no, it's
Speaker 4: it's fifty five pounds, or it's eight and a half
Speaker 4: seven thousand for a fast sale. But you know, but
Speaker 4: that's the that's that explains why dinosaurs have kind of
Speaker 4: exploded in price, because people, especially children, love them and
Speaker 4: they are much more universally admired than a lot of
Speaker 4: the modern masters or kind of art market categories that
Speaker 4: will fall out of favor every five or ten years. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I agree with you kind of you're call on that.
Speaker 1: I'll tell my kids tonight that maybe they should go.
Speaker 2: Into Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: That was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fantastic, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Pleasure to meet you guys, and thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're going to be in London in May,
Speaker 2: so we might actually take up our love.
Speaker 1: To love to see it.
Speaker 4: I'm looking forward and yeah, please send me a message
Speaker 4: and come over and I'll show you some cool things.
Speaker 1: Great pack all.
Speaker 4: Of that, Joe.
Speaker 2: That was a really fun conversation. There is something to
Speaker 2: that final point from Salvi, this idea that there is
Speaker 2: a universality of interest in dinosaurs. Right, It feels like everyone,
Speaker 2: if you have any sort of humanity in you, has
Speaker 2: gone through a dinosaur stage when you were a kid.
Speaker 1: Absolutely no, And you know this idea that art will
Speaker 1: go in and out of.
Speaker 2: Style, and dinosaurs are forever.
Speaker 1: Dinosaurs are forever, and so probably from the perspective of
Speaker 1: a collector or a museum and you want to have
Speaker 1: a lot of interest, dinosaurs are the way to go.
Speaker 1: And then just this idea that I do imagine that
Speaker 1: there isn't you know. I talked about this a little
Speaker 1: bit of anxiety about there being private trade and ownership
Speaker 1: of them. But if the plus side is that it
Speaker 1: makes excavation more economically viable, and if in many of
Speaker 1: these instances the dinosaurs do end up in museums for
Speaker 1: scientists to study regardless, it sounds like a win win.
Speaker 1: For the most part, it sounds pretty good.
Speaker 2: I think there are still some environmental issues. We probably
Speaker 2: should have talked about this a little bit, but there
Speaker 2: are still some environmental concerns about large scale digs. I know,
Speaker 2: the mammoth bone industry or mammoth tusk I can't talk
Speaker 2: industry in Russia has been something of an issue, so
Speaker 2: that could.
Speaker 1: Be also something to think about factor.
Speaker 2: But I do think like crowding in that private capital,
Speaker 2: I mean clearly has led to some interesting discoveries already,
Speaker 2: which Sal was talking about, this idea that they discovered
Speaker 2: a new species. By the way, I want to go
Speaker 2: back to the beginning of the conversation. So Sal mentioned
Speaker 2: a nanosaurus skeleton. Here is a nanosaurus. What does that
Speaker 2: look like to you?
Speaker 1: It ken looks like a chicken a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to me, it looks exactly like a pheasant. This
Speaker 2: is the same This is the same thing. Okay, great, right, capitulation.
Speaker 1: You're right, there's great. This is a good example of
Speaker 1: a I wouldn't have made that, but yes, and has.
Speaker 2: Those little arm By the way, one other thing you
Speaker 2: were talking about the gold plated dinosaur skeleton in Miami,
Speaker 2: our producer Carmen points out that it is not, in
Speaker 2: fact a dinosaur skeleton. It's a wooly mammoth skeleton. So
Speaker 2: your kids have more ammunition now to make fun of
Speaker 2: you for misidentifying dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: You know, the thing is, I really thought that I
Speaker 1: didn't know, So what's a wooly mammoth that's not a dinosaur.
Speaker 2: That's just harry elephant, a prehistoric elephant.
Speaker 1: They died, but they were also prehistoric.
Speaker 2: I think, so yeah, right.
Speaker 1: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: God, I feel like we're going to get emails from
Speaker 2: a million, maybe not a million, a few paleontologists out
Speaker 2: there complaining about some of our classifications. So I apologize
Speaker 2: in advance if you got that wrong.
Speaker 1: I really am very ignorant about this. If it looks
Speaker 1: like an old animal, I just assume it's a dinosaur.
Speaker 1: That's my definition of a dinosaur.
Speaker 2: Prehistoric mammal, I think is an accurate way of describing
Speaker 2: wooly mammoths.
Speaker 1: Also, look at a pterodactyl, that's a dinosaur. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Well, so I looked this up after you mentioned that
Speaker 2: because I was very surprised I did not know this.
Speaker 2: It's from a category that is very closely related to dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: So it's the way people make distinctions between like silosaurs
Speaker 2: and dinosaurs. I don't really understand them, all those distinctions,
Speaker 2: but apparently you know scientific.
Speaker 1: Propertualness such that. And it is from the Jurassic period. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's from the late Jurassic. It's a dinosaur.
Speaker 2: I have something embarrassing to emit, which is for the
Speaker 2: longest time I kept saying petrodactyl, and.
Speaker 1: So you're not the first. I'm sure.
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 1: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2: Hey, this has been another episode of the Odd Loots podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 1: Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, dash O
Speaker 1: Bennett at Dashbot, and Cale Brooks at cal Brooks. And
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