Identifying Fossils for Science
Are you a museum wondering exactly what is on display? An insurance company struggling to determine how much of a specimen is original? A collector looking to offset the traditional information imbalance? A seller looking for a way to share how amazing your specimen is? An auction house seeking transparency? The Paleon Score is the solution!
The Paleon Score is an empirical assessment of a fossil comprised of over a dozen variables aimed to evaluate the quality and quantity of a fossil. Conducted by paleontologists specialized in your specific taxon, the resulting scientific report provides an atlas of what is actually present. No longer is one mired in guesswork, assumptions, and blind trust, especially to a seller that you think is watching the topline revenue number more than your authenticity desires. Know what you truly have, not what you are being told. The Paleon Score's power derives from its academic, arm's-length, agnostic build, developed by publishing academics rather than commercially driven individuals.
A Paleon Score's output consists of a transparent, objective, scientific report, the foundation of which is the phylogenetic analysis. We work in a team of three paleontologists to conduct a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis using the latest character matrices. We carefully consider each character before recording a score, and video-record why we scored each character the way we did.
The resulting cladogram provides a genus-level identification. We remove the guesswork (at least as much as one can in paleontology).
We work with you to obtain CT scans and then our CT-specialist paleontologists interpret the data. CT scans "see through" plaster.
Example of why a Paleon Score is so important
This specimen was being scored by a graduate student for inclusion in their research. They analyzed a 3D surface scan of an Allosaurus dorsal vertebra. The black bone was clearly visible in places and the student believed there was original bone under the smooth plaster surface.
Typical digital results from a 3D surface scan of a bone. This is the most common method employed by museum personnel and sellers, and is fraught with peril
The Paleon team wasn't so sure; we've been around many decades each and have had our fair share of being fooled. We advised the student we'd CT-scan it and see what we could see. As you can see below, it was eye opening to the student to say the least!
Thanks to the massively different densities of plaster when compared to bone, a CT scanner makes short work of the restoration. The blue is actual bone. Where'd the rest go? We removed it digitally, as it was all plaster! The bone had been restored by someone who had carefully painted the restoration to match the bone. We suspect it was a bone that had been on display at some point. Alas, the restoration was good enough to fool an early-career graduate student. And it was more than good enough to convince the avid enthusiast they were purchasing a complete bone.
For some, this revelation is irrelevant; they want a bone to sit on a shelf and tell their friends they have "an Allosaurus backbone," but I suspect most buyers would be quite disappointed to discover the most visible parts, the neural spine and transverse processes, were entirely restored. Alas, museums around the world continue to mount original bones that have undergone this exact process, making it impossible for researchers to confidently study mounted specimens. Specimens sold privately and at auction also suffer from this level of restoration. Sellers know buyers are often seeking eye candy over authenticity. Alas, buyers have no way, short of complete visual documentation during preparation, to know short of a CT scan. Insurance companies struggle to know how much of a specimen on display is original. Their task is made even worse by the fact that some commercial preparators mixed ground-up dinosaur bones into the paint and plaster, making it extremely difficult to tell externally what is original bone.
What you thought you bought... what you bought.
Overlaying a 3D surface scan on a CT scan
Why doesn't everyone CT scan their bones? The truth is the output generated by a CT scan is massive, gigabytes of data thanks to the thousands of slices that are taken of each bone. These slices then need to be reassembled digitally, which requires special, often expensive, software. Not everyone has a CT scanner nearby, or the CT scanner won't let them use the machine for non-academic purposes. Some would rather such information not be made public. Others didn't know it can do this.
CT isn't a one-trick pony
CT scans allow us to identify paleopathologies. We recently published a paper where we used CT scans to identify a fracture which turned 30 years of scientific interpretation of this particular bone on its head. What was once thought to three vertebrae that ended with a "button" turned out to be one vertebra that had been broken and rehealed. Despite numerous academics holding the bone, none realized it wasn't three bones until our CT scan.
Surface photograph of the vertebra that I always thought was three bones
CT scan showing the break and the callus that healed around it.
The discovery led to
a paper positing what might have happened and how the tail may have been used in life. Without the CT data, we wouldn't have known.
"This skeleton is 70% complete!"
This is one of the most dangerous statements that a museum gallery or seller can make. Why? Have you ever heard them provide you the denominator, show you the list of bones in a spreadsheet that were present... and missing? The few times I have I noticed they left off the gastralia, sclerotic rings, chevrons, caudal, sacral, dorsal, and cervical ribs, and more. Skulls seem to never acknowledge they are lacking the columella, basipterygoid, and dozens of other internal bones that matter if one is conducting scientific research, providing insurance, or seeking the most complete, authentic specimen around. One can include all four feet of a sauropod, plus all the chevrons and various ribs and have almost 50% of a skeleton by bone count. Thus the importance of an osteograph. However, osteographs are fraught with peril as they invariably are illustrated as if the entire bone is present, which is rare, indeed.
A second way we measure the specimen is bone volume present, derived from the CT scan data wherever possible. A CT scanner removes the plaster, so we can provide the volume of bone present. We can then determine how much of a given element is bone versus plaster, and derive an accurate percentage. The document we provide makes it clear the numbers we are using in case the museum or seller disagrees with our interpretation. We are scientists and love to engage in such discussions.
The problem with volume (often called bone mass), is one can have roughly 50% of a skeleton's bone mass, especially if it is a sauropod, by having both femora, tibiae, humeri, iliae and scapcoracoids. Again, the score by itself means nothing without a comprehensive, and accurate, osteograph. Our osteographs are done by one of the best academic skeletal artists in the industry, with each bone present being drawn onto the osteography. No templates here, the osteograph produced is of the specimen receiving a Paleon Score. This is a tedious, time-consuming process, taking far longer than what traditionally transpires, where popular skeletal artists see their work grabbed (often without credit!) and filled in with colors that suggest the entire bone is present when quite often it is far less than 100%.
The third score we provide is the Segment Score. This is as close to subjective as we get in our Paleon Score, as we evaluate what % of what buyers expect to be present is present. A specimen that has a premaxilla, maxilla, dentary, lacrimal, and partial braincase will score low on total bone count, medium-to-high on % by volume, but might get a perfect Segment Score.
More Than Just Bones
Prehistoric animals didn't live in a vacuum, which is why we don't stop at simply analyzing the bones. In the complete Paleon Score, we provide palynological, microfaunal, and geochemical assays, chronometric dating and sedimentary/stratigraphic, quarry analyses, taphonomic interpretations, and quarry digitization. We want to document as much as we can the environment the animal died in, and extrapolate what it might have lived in.
Scientific Publication Level of Documentation
Where possible, we provide orthogonal photos in six views, 3D surface scanning, videography with narration, and measurements of each element. The goal is to be able to produce a peer-reviewed paper should that be the desire of the Paleon Score requester.
Legal fossil sales are not going away, thus we want to work with finders, purchasers, and owners to best capture as much scientific data as possible. In scenarios where the specimen might truly disappear we want to be able to share with the academic world the specimen's story. Academics today name new taxa from photos of destroyed specimens, or lost specimens that exist in a single, dubious, line drawing, certainly a fully CT-scanned, carefully evaluated specimen scored via a current cladistic matrix could be published.
Some specimens merit additional research. Skin impressions can be evaluated for the presence of melanosomes, which can suggest skin color and patterns. Histological analyses, especially of the new dual-energy spectral scanner kind, can suggest a minimum age at death. The aforementioned scanners can suggest at the actual sex of the animal (!), though this research is currently being groundtruthed by the team using extant ratites.
What You Get
Paleon Score buyers receive a comprehensive, fully transparent research-grade report. Unlike all other reports today, we provide the denominator. The numeric data is in spreadsheet form. We provide a video of why we scored each character the way we did, and detail the methodology employed on the cladistic analysis.
This level of transparency means your experts can examine the report and, should they disagree, at least understand why the team scored a specific bone the way we did.
The report is written by practicing, publishing paleontologists. We find at least one researcher specializing in the animal being scored. If we can find more, we will, but some taxa are only rigorously studied by a single living human. For the most common animals- theropods (think tyrannosaurs and allosaurs), the duck-billed hadrosaurs, the horned and frilled ceratopsians, the plated and spiked stegosaurs, the fleet-of-foot ornithischians, and the long-necked, long-tailed sauropods- we have experts already on hand.
Whether you are a museum wanting specimens in your collection analyzed, an insurance company wondering what exactly you are insuring in a museum, or a commercial collector looking to add another piece to your personal collection or donate it to a museum, you owe it to your constituents, and yourself, to set up a consultation.
Buyers should ask sellers for this report so as to understand exactly what is being purchased. If a seller balks, we are not saying they are being nefarious or underhanded, but the largest problem in today’s fossil market is the information imbalance. The sellers, especially if they found and excavated it, know exactly what bones are original versus which are restored. They know not only if it is a composite, but what bones were not part of the original specimen. For researchers, a single specimen is far more valuable to science than is a composite comprising numerous individuals. Composites may look great, but academics rely upon various limb ratios that simply can't be trusted when more than one specimen is mixed together. We liken it to classic cars, a numbers-matching vehicle is more value to a researcher than one that has the head from specimen A, the arms from B, the legs from C, and the tail from D. We have numerous academic tools at our disposal to provide a likelihood analysis that all of the elements belong to the same individual specimen.
We do not provide a valuation. We do not provide an estimation of what it might sell for or be worth. We leave that to the appraisers. We have read reports they prepared and marvel at how they provide an approximate value even when they lack some (much?) of the information we'd presume would be needed to determine a value. We can review your appraisal and see if their bone identification is correct, if their % present calculation matches what we would say is present, review their osteograph, and more.
We will provide an academic history of the animal, how many we were able to locate that have been published on, how many photographs exist, which ones are on display where. For some, like Triceratops, there are hundreds of partial skulls across museums around the world. They aren't rare, but they are super cool-looking, and because we have so many, we can conduct actual statistical analyses, something that is impossible when only one or two specimens are known. Similarly, Tyrannosaurus is known from over 100 specimens; sadly, most in public repositories have not been illustrated or properly published. By capturing this information for both public and private specimens, we hope to democratize paleontology, allowing researchers from around the world to be able to study the specimens using digital tools.
Is it a composite? How many of the elements appear real, but they are mostly plaster or even have bone ground up!
We want to gather as much information on as many specimens as possible. We acknowledge that fossil sales will happen; our goal is to participate in as many sales as possible to provide buyers with the best information we can gather. We love working with sellers, helping you figure out what you have, to avoid downstream frustration that can result from unintentional misinformation.
Are you an auction house wanting your material examined? Bring us in before the specimen is prepared for mounting, as researching the bones before they are painted and plastered is the ideal scenario.
Do you have a museum mount that you wish you could study? The mounting of original material is one of the greatest travesties to happen to a fossil skeleton. Mounted skeletons are typically not properly studied, but there are ways to do it (but you might get sticker shock :-)).
Fossil Financing
Over the course of our research we have met many paleoenthusiasts who want to see fossils safely excavated and prepared, all while being carefully documented. These individuals can provide financing to bring a specimen from "grave to cradle."
Send me an email to book a time to chat.
Curious About What You Have?
Do you own a specimen and are curious about what you really bought? We would love to chat! We have observed examples firsthand of auction houses overstating (typically a result of the information provided by the seller) what is present. Misidentified elements, erroneous osteographs, and even wrongly identified genera have crossed our desks over the years. Mistakes happen, and science is a self-correcting field; after all we are called re-searchers, searching again (and again, and again). Let us help you determine what you really have.
Most sellers are hard-working and honest, but they lack the ability to conduct such research. This is compounded by a divide in which many academics refuse to work on a specimen that is not guaranteed to go to a museum, due to the near-universal ban journals have on publishing specimens not in public repositories. The hypocrisy here is journals are OK with naming specimens from photographs of destroyed material and from line drawings of specimens long gone. If it is OK to name a taxon from a photograph, surely it is OK to publish a fully CT-scanned specimen where the data is readily available.
For you isotope specialists that absolutely require a piece of the bone to run your analysis, we ask our clients to set aside a chunk of bone to permit such future analysis.
Radioactive?
Are you working in radioactive formations where the bone is hotter than the surrounding matrix? If so, we have a modernized take on using radiation to find bones. Before you take down that back wall, give us a call, and we’ll see if we can’t give you a statistical likelihood of a bone being underneath the rock.
Technology
In some formations, we can use drones to find fossils. We can help you find fossils on your land, and we are happy to work internationally to help find fossils in vast areas or hard-to-reach places.
What Does This Cost?
We are not inexpensive. We do not get a percentage of any sale; our fees are not tied to the alleged value of a specimen. Rather, they are based on the estimated work it will take our team of highly skilled professionals (bone doctors :-)) to produce a document that will stand the test of time.
Brian@FossilCrates.com
