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Science 17 July 1998:
Vol. 281. no. 5375, pp. 315 - 317
DOI: 10.1126/science.281.5375.315
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News of the Week

PALEONTOLOGY:
Smuggled Chinese Fossils on Exhibit

Mutsumi Stone and Jennifer Couzin in Washington and Li Hui in Beijing

In response to a 5 July exposé on fossil trading in one of Japan's largest daily newspapers, six Japanese museums are scrambling to get on the right side of a 1989 Chinese law that prohibits the export of such cultural and scientific treasures without proper certification. At the center of the controversy is a chicken-sized creature called Confuciusornis, the second earliest known bird and the oldest to possess such modern characteristics as a toothless beak and the ability to fly. The same cloud may also hang over Confuciusornis specimens acquired by museums in New Mexico and in Frankfurt, Germany.

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Collecting, conservation and conservatism: late twentieth century developments in the culture of British geology.
S. J. Knell (2002)
Geological Society, London, Special Publications 192, 329-351
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