[CPProt.net] Around Barstow, Thieves' Prey Is Prehistory. In a unique and rocky zone, fossils and antiquities disappear from the ground.

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

 Around Barstow, Thieves' Prey Is Prehistory
In a unique and rocky zone, fossils and antiquities disappear from the
ground.
By Susannah Rosenblatt
Times Staff Writer

August 29, 2005

RAINBOW BASIN NATURAL AREA, Calif. - Sweat beads on the paleontologist's
reddening forehead as he points to nothing. 

More precisely, the jagged, buff-colored holes on a jutting slab of mudstone
and volcanic ash in this dusty corner of the Mojave Desert show where
something used to be. The heart-shaped footprints left by an ancestral camel
on a prehistoric lakeside 12 million to 20 million years ago are gone,
pinched by a longtime scourge of the desert: fossil thieves.

"More and more, these relics get destroyed because of ignorance or
whatever," said Robert Hilburn, a Barstow paleontologist and president of
the Mojave River Valley Museum there. "Instead there'll be a heart-shaped
piece of rock in a box in somebody's garage."

The prized tracks were fixed in formations that draw paleontologists and
geologists from around the world. Minerals from the layers of volcanic ash
north of Barstow allow researchers to precisely date the fossils and
cross-reference them with other specimens of more uncertain origins. Plus
they offered a singular glimpse into a camel ancestor's pause at an ancient
watering hole.

As long as park rangers have been trying to protect the sites, black market
fossil dealers and curious collectors alike have been chipping off chunks of
prehistory from Barstow's geologically unique Rainbow Basin Natural Area.
Here, the multicolored Barstow Formation is a collision of jumbled angles,
with faded red and green rock outcroppings and canyons exposing millions of
years of dramatic geologic change, unobscured by vegetation.

Scientists would have to "travel the world over to find all the geologic
features you find in this single compressed area," Hilburn said.

California isn't as rich in dinosaur bones as Utah, Wyoming or the Dakotas.
But it does contain a trove of fossils and artifacts left by prehistoric
animals and ancient civilizations. Elephants, rhinoceroses, saber-toothed
cats and bear-dog hybrids roamed Southern California millions of years ago,
leaving behind bones and tracks. Researchers have also uncovered American
Indian rock art, arrowheads and cooking pots from as far back as 12,000
years ago.

The market for such items includes both artifacts legitimately unearthed on
private lands - with the owner's permission - and poached public relics. 

Prices for a projectile point from an arrow or spear can run from $50 to
$100, said Joan Oxendine, archeologist and cultural resource program manager
with the federal Bureau of Land Management in Moreno Valley. Dinosaur skulls
cost $10,000 at some gem and mineral shows, while smaller specimens can go
for $50 to $200, said Robert Reynolds, a Riverside paleontologist and senior
cultural resource manager with LSA Associates, a company that helps preserve
specimens found during construction projects. Dealers can sell prime mammal
fossils for thousands as well. 

Thieves routinely outnumber and outmaneuver the few state and federal law
enforcement agents responsible for protecting fossils and artifacts on
public land. 

The BLM has six agents to patrol 3 million acres of the Mojave Desert under
its jurisdiction. California state park rangers are responsible for
protecting more than 10,000 archeological specimens and countless fossils
sprinkled over 1.5 million acres statewide, said Walter Gray, chief of
cultural resources for state parks.

State park rangers arrest about 50 so-called pot hunters and collectors each
year, said Randy Sederquist, chief of the state parks' public safety
division. Southern California is particularly prone to such raids,
Sederquist said. 

Experts say the total number of violations is impossible to pin down. But
when one-time funds were appropriated in 1991 for a full-time cultural site
monitor in Joshua Tree, the number of reported archeological violations
there jumped from two the previous year to 146. Now, the number of violators
caught has hovered around 10 to 20 annually.

Generally, fewer than 10 such incidents are reported by rangers each year at
Death Valley National Park and Mojave National Preserve, said Kathy Clark,
staff ranger with the National Park Service's regional office in Denver,
which tracks such trends. Nationwide last year, the National Park Service
logged 372 violations of laws protecting fossils and archeological relics.
Fifty-one cases were prosecuted, said spokesman Al Nash. 

Archeological relics such as pots, basketry and masks are in greatest
demand, supporting an international underground industry, said Bob Bryson,
an archeologist and cultural resources program chief at the Mojave National
Preserve. 

"It's a huge problem," Bryson said, that "has gone largely unnoticed by the
public."

The preserve employs four rangers to cover 1.6 million acres, with two more
patrol officers coming, Bryson said. 

The desert terrain makes it especially difficult to apprehend thieves.
Rangers can rarely sneak up on a fossil poacher, said Roxie Trost, a field
manager in the BLM's Barstow office. 

"They can see us coming miles away," Trost said. Her office is investigating
the stolen camel tracks, which were discovered missing by a geologist last
month. 

Rangers actually nabbing looters in the act is "pretty rare," said Todd
Swain, the lone National Park Service special agent for all of Southern
California, who specializes in investigating cultural resource crimes.
Investigators rely more on rangers discovering vandalized sites and tips
from the public to root out the bandits. 

Occasionally, artifacts are picked up by well-meaning hikers and campers who
think they're protecting something precious by bringing them to park
rangers. Serious souvenir hunters can be as familiar with the nooks and
crannies of the vast desert terrain as veteran looters, who are sometimes
involved in other illegal activities. Some raiders are out pillaging every
weekend for years, picking through the most valuable items and leaving piles
of rock flakes and prehistoric refuse behind, Bryson said. 

Cultural looting in California is on the rise, said Gray, the state park
cultural resource chief, as California's ballooning population spills into
formerly isolated areas and all-terrain vehicles allow thieves to motor far
into wilderness areas. 

And "the power of the Internet has given people . the ability to actually
reach prospective buyers for objects in an instantaneous manner that didn't
exist" before, Gray said. 

"Humans by nature are packrats, and there's not a park resource out there .
that there isn't somebody that isn't just obsessed with collecting to have
for their own," Swain said, likening fossil enthusiasts to comic book or
Beanie Baby fanatics. Swain is investigating six to 12 archeological cases
across the Southland at any given time. 

Penalties can be so light - a fine of a few thousand dollars or several
months in jail - that antiquity thieves can afford to get caught. "It's not
like people are going to go to jail for life or they are going to be fined
millions of dollars," Swain said. 

In 2001, officials busted a ring of Nevada raiders who had stolen at least
11,000 artifacts, including sandals, basket fragments and jewelry, from
public lands in Nevada and Death Valley, much of which they displayed in
their homes after selling the most valuable pieces. One offender was
sentenced to 37 months in jail, in one of the stiffest sentences ever
imposed for such crimes, Swain said. 

The federal Archeological Resources Protection Act only prohibits filching
cultural objects, such as bottles, structural ruins or skeletal remains at
burial sites. 

"In the paleontological world, there isn't the same legal framework we have
with the architectural stuff," Bryson said.

The U.S. Senate passed a similar paleontological protection act last month;
it has yet to go through the House. 

Agencies are also trying to combat such thievery through educational
programs, teaching visitors not to pocket fossils or arrowheads as
souvenirs. 

"It used to be you'd always run into people from Barstow who had their piece
of the rock," Reynolds said. 

He stressed the importance of making plaster or resin copies of
irreplaceable fossil tracks - as he and Hilburn did with the camel prints
before they were filched. The copies provide a permanent record of
prehistoric life even when the originals are destroyed. 

"You can't go out and re-create a bunch of dinosaurs," Swain said. "What's
there is there."

The land management organizations also train "cultural stewards," volunteers
who monitor the most sensitive sites, checking for evidence of physical
damage and collaborating with rangers. 

Fossils and artifacts are "not a renewable resource," Oxendine said.

"The sites fit together in a cultural pattern; if part of that pattern is
broken, then that information is lost" forever.

"These are resources that belong to the public," Trost said. "For somebody
to go out and remove that, everybody loses." 



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