As far as we can tell, Stegosaurus died out about 145 million years ago, while Tyrannosaurus showed up about 72 million years ago.
There's more time between the last Stegosaurus and the first T-Rex then there is between the last T-Rex and us right now. A little off topic, but it's kind of mind-blowing to think of just how long the dinosaurs were around.
The OP said "There's more time between the last Stegosaurus and the first T-Rex" which computes to 145-72 = 73 and "then (sic) there is between the last T-Rex and us right now." which computes to 66-0=66. Note that 7 million years is about 10% of the timescales involved, so perhaps not something to be dismissed as "scientific error".
> Jason Cooper, a commercial paleontologist, went for a walk around his property near the aptly named Colorado town of Dinosaur with a friend and found a bit of femur protruding from some rock.
The town was renamed "Dinosaur" because it's very close to Dinosaur National Monument, where they found a bunch of dinosaur skeletons sticking out of rocks.
> with how pure research budgets have been and probably will be cut, I guess they have no choice.
The seller is described as a commercial paleontologist, so it's not like this is a sad outcome for him and his team that they arrived at of necessity. They set out to find an expensive fossil and succeeded.
The representative from Sotheby's even says that they were involved from day 1:
> “This is the first time a specimen has been auctioned where we’ve been working together from the time it was excavated,” she said. “This is the most transparent sale of a dinosaur to have ever occurred.”
There are a small handful of relatively well-know dinosaurs: stegosaurus being one of them. There’s also Tyrannosaurus rex, Brontosaurus (maybe you’re not supposed to call them that anymore), Triceratops and maybe a couple of others. Why were these ones so “famous”? Were they the earliest ones discovered? most common? Just fine examples of their type?
Probably just because they're all very large, and very odd-looking mostly. Other types are generally smaller and more boring. They might also have been discovered earlier, establishing those general body types.
Brontosaurus doesn't exist any more; apparently it was some kind of mistake due to incomplete knowledge I think, or maybe some kind of mix-up. Apatosaurus I think is the current king of that type of long-necked huge plant-eating sauropod.
>Brontosaurus is a genus in the subfamily Apatosaurinae, which includes only it and Apatosaurus, which are distinguished by their firm builds and thick necks. Although Apatosaurinae was named in 1929, the group was not used validly until an extensive 2015 paper, which found Brontosaurus to be valid. However, the status of Brontosaurus is still uncertain, with some paleontologists still considering it a synonym of Apatosaurus.
And:
>Almost all 20th-century paleontologists agreed with Riggs that all Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus species should be classified in a single genus. According to the rules of the ICZN, which governs the scientific names of animals, the name Apatosaurus, having been published first, had priority; Brontosaurus was considered a junior synonym and was therefore discarded from formal use.
Seconding other poster that all those were already famous. Like if you bought a small set of plastic dinosaurs before that movie, those would pretty much be guaranteed to be in the set, plus some sort of hadrosaur/duckbill and maybe an ankylosaurus.
Land Before Time included most of those in the “main cast” but I think it was following the trend, not setting it.
Velociraptor (well, the fake Deinonychus-like “velociraptor antirrhopus” or whatever from the book/movie) and definitely Dilophosaurus got a huge popularity boost from Jurassic Park.
Their “fame” certainly well pre-dated that movie. These were the ones I knew as a kid in the 60s and 70s, and would be featured in old stop animation movies even before my time.
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I see large fossils being hauled out by individuals who have no interest in them, when I approach to chat, other than to sell or illegally export. They remind me of gollum, seeing everyone around them as a threat to their riches.
But a lot of fossils wouldn’t see the light of day unless there was a commercial market. I have heard stories on fossil forums about countries where there are restrictions and quarries will just crush them along with all the other rock.
In my country the vast majority of palaeontology is done by amateurs. There is only so much public funding but loads of amateurs. If private ownership was banned then academic research would go to near zero.
Creating positive incentives for landowners and discoverers is important. This shows up repeatedly as an issue with both archaeological and endangered species discoveries in many countries, including the US, where landowners are strongly disincentivized to report any discoveries since it can have a strong negative impact on the value of their land and their ability to use it. As often as not this leads to the destruction of the thing people are trying to preserve e.g. "shoot, shovel, shut up". [0] It is understandably difficult to get people to act against their own interest.
I guess it is the same thing with other archeologic artefacts. Here in germany, if you find something old and remarkable, you must report it and you will get nothing, no matter how long you searched. So most of that stuff is happening illegal and underground, which means that most findings never make their way to the researchers and the public, like this here allmost did not:
Yes and not. We had burnt fossils for most of our history without any remorse. If there is an economic value attached just because science, and this value is higher than the value of the stuff as coal or rock will be preserved.
Previously people building a road would just shut their mouths and pave over it. Now they have an incentive to pause the job and extract it.
There are untold millions of fossils waiting to be found. We will never have a shortage of them. This would have never been excavated if it were not for the financial
incentive to do so.
Indeed, but it has been happening for hundreds of millions of years for billions of individual organisms, and we haven't excavated even a fraction of a percent of their possible locations.
less than 1% of all species to exist have been found as fossils. 1% of a billion is a large number but its still finite and not all fossils are the same. we dont' know their value till they are dug up and studied with teh context of where they were found in tact.
