Chemical tests may help curb thefts of fossils

Looters who plundered one of Utah's newest troves of dinosaur bones got away with ribs, vertebrae and part of an ancient leg bone they had to break apart to remove. They also stole hidden scientific clues about the life of a young diplodocus dinosaur that roamed the area some 150 million years ago.

"It's like pieces of a puzzle that are now gone," said Scott Williams, collections and exhibits manager at the Burpee Museum of Natural History, the Rockford, Ill.-based institution that has been digging at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management-owned site.

The bones — and the thieves — from the site near Hanksville haven't been seen since the theft last fall. And, odds are, they won't. Stolen dinosaur bones and other fossils snatched illegally from federally owned land often disappear into living rooms, lucrative underground markets or expensive private collections.

But a new forensic technique — something akin to DNA fingerprinting — could give investigators a long-sought tool to track fossil thieves.

Researchers are testing methods designed to match chemical signatures of naturally occurring elements that seep into bones during fossilization with surrounding soil.

The process — which analyzes a group known as rare earth elements — could someday lead to a database of site "fingerprints" used to link bones to looted areas. More work is needed, but early signs are encouraging that the technique could be useful in nabbing those capitalizing on looted fossils, said Dennis Terry, a researcher at Temple University in Philadelphia.

"I really hope we can make use of this to deter the ones out there really trying to make a profit from this," said Terry, who is working on the project with fellow Temple researcher David Grandstaff.

Testing on the technique continues in Wyoming this summer. It has been honed since 2005 at Nebraska National Forest, another hot spot for fossil thieves. So far, results indicate the analysis could tie 85 percent to 98 percent of fossil samples back to their original sites. Terry is also speaking with officials at South Dakota's Badlands National Park about starting a database of the park's most poached sites.

"So often we catch people with fossils in their car or something like that but we can't prove they were collected in the park," said Rachel Benton, a paleontologist at Badlands, which has a long history of fossil poaching.