[CPProt.net] Bangkok businessman has taken international antiquities smuggling to an extreme by auctioning dinosaur fossils on the internet

[MSN and CPProt list (Ton Cremers)]

Terror alert reveals eBay trade in dinosaurs
By Jan McGirk in Bangkok
26 February 2005


A Bangkok businessman has taken international antiquities smuggling to an
extreme by auctioning dinosaur fossils on the internet.

Undercover Thai police raided Piriya Wachachitphan's modest home this week,
after a tip-off from the US Department of Homeland Security, which stumbled
on the trade during an anti-terror clampdown.

US customs officers intercepted a suspicious package from Thailand last
summer during a nationwide "orange alert". No anthrax or explosives were
hidden inside, but its unusual contents - a prehistoric bone - caught their
attention.

It took them eight months to trace the parcels of dinosaur bones to the
source, a 25-year-old computer enthusiast in the Thai capital. Mark
Robinson, a US customs and immigration official in Bangkok, described the
arrest of Mr Piriya was "quite significant".

Officials said Mr Piriya had openly advertised the 100-million-year-old
bones on the auction site eBay, where the bidding started at $1,000 (£520).

"Usually we find people selling one or two pieces," Mr Robinson said. But Mr
Piriya was selling dinosaur bones in bulk, and his mailing list included
clients in Britain, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan. As evidence, police seized
108 big saurian bones along with five cartons of smaller items, including
eggs and copralites, pieces of fossilised dung, which were particularly
popular.

The Thai businessman, who denies smuggling fossils, was charged with hiding
and processing antiquities for sale, and released on bail. If found guilty,
he faces a seven-year prison sentence and a fine of 700,000 baht (£9,500).

Thailand's tourism industry has been capitalising on the spate of
discoveries of its prehistoric past since 1976, and the Tyrannosaurus rex
has become a common merchandising feature since widespread excavations began
15 years ago.

Police said it was the first time an alleged smuggler of dinosaur fossils
had been arrested in Thailand. Mr Piriya was allegedly supplied by villagers
from the north-east of the country, who sold him 30 sets of fossilised
dinosaur bones that had been uncovered in the provinces of Khon Kaen and
Kalasin. The prices he was said to have negotiated, from 50,000 baht to
100,000 baht, are equivalent to a year's salary in much of rural Thailand.

Some of the locals chanced upon fossils while ploughing; others brought him
more venerable pieces that had been placed as curios inside temples.

The businessman is said to have got the idea on a trip to the tourist
attraction Dinosaurland, a fossil Jurassic Park about 56 miles north-west of
Khon Kaen, Thailand's fourth largest city.

Partial skeletons of dinosaurs are displayed in the Phu Wiang National Park.
Palaeontology buffs flock to the park's nine quarries to visit local fossil
finds, including a six-metre-long predecessor ofT. rex, estimated to be 120
million years old. The Siamotyrannus isanensis made international headlines
when it was unearthed in 1996, and pinpointed the origins of the carnivore
to Asia. The discoveries in Thailand support the theory that dinosaurs
originated in what is now south-east Asia before migrating to north America.

Palaeontologists despair that when smugglers rip fossils away from their
surroundings, they lose much of their potential academic value.

Besides old bones, Mr Piriya is also alleged to have also traded in precious
cultural artefacts. Police said his computer records show that he hawked at
least 1,000 items, including Buddha images, worth more than $200,000. Some
of the more valuable pieces were ancient Khmer statues, hacked away from
Cambodian temples. 
   26 February 2005 06:36

http://news.independent.co.uk/