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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 08/08/2009 : 03:48:46
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I certainly hope so! DNA-like technique may help nab fossil thieves
By MIKE STARK (AP) – 4 days ago
SALT LAKE CITY — Looters who plundered one of Utah's newest troves of dinosaur bones got away with ribs, vertebrae and part of an ancient legbone they had to bust 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 occuring elements that seep into bones during fossilization with surrounding soil.
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Those fossils are mine! Those fossils are yours! They do not belong to some black-market dealing scumbag turning a buck off ego-fluffing dolts who want a conversation piece for their mantles because otherwise they'd have nothing intelligible to say.
I hope this works out and a whole passel of thieves go to the slam!
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Edited by - filthy on 08/08/2009 03:49:48
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Fossil thieves to get busted, maybe.
