National Post (National Edition)
‘Nothing fishy’ about buy, dinosaur fossil hunter says
Two ancient specimens sent back to China
Wendy Sloboda insists there is “nothing fishy” about a purchase she made on eBay of a 250-million-year-old marine reptile fossil from China.
“Everything was above board,” said Sloboda, who lives in Warner, Alta., and has a reputation as a “legendary” dinosaur fossil hunter.
But that simple online purchase a decade ago snowballed into something of an international incident, culminating in Canada’s announcement last week that her ichthyosaur fossil had been repatriated to China along with another ancient fossil after they were deemed to be “illegally exported cultural property.”
The other item, a 220-million-year-old Saurichthys fish fossil, was linked in court records to a young Edmonton lawyer. But in an interview, Mikkel Arnston said he wasn’t even the person who bought the fossil. Instead a friend in China had sent it to him.
“I collect fossils and I imagine he thought it would be a quaint gift,” he said. “I think he just thought it was a piece of art.”
Experts say both cases illustrate the need to stay away from the private trade of fossils, as it perpetuates illegal excavation and the loss of important data.
“When ham-fisted amateurs take stuff out with a claw hammer, stuff’s going to get lost and ruined,” said Don Henderson, curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta. “You’re doing science a disservice.”
Plus, he said, “you’re possibly getting into trouble if your stuff gets confiscated.”
In a press release last week, Canadian Heritage officials said the repatriation of the “significant heritage objects” to China was complete. But one question lingered: how the fossils got into Canada.
The National Post found the answers in records held by the Federal Court of Canada.
Sloboda, who has a dinosaur named after her (Wendiceratops pinhornensis), paid US$1,350 for the ichthyosaur fossil in May 2007 using a PayPal account, the records show. The sender in Hong Kong described the item on the air waybill as “1 piece art rock (gift)” and listed its value at US$100.
In June 2010, Sloboda showed the specimen to Robin Cuthbertson, then a graduate researcher at the University of Calgary.
“I immediately tell her that she has brought the specimen into Canada illegally,” Cuthbertson later told the RCMP.
Sloboda asked if donating the specimen to a scientific institution was possible. Cuthbertson said he told her that it would need to be repatriated to China first and she agreed.
That fall, Cuthbertson attended a conference in Texas and asked some counterparts from Peking University whether they were interested in having the specimen donated. They did and plans got underway to collaborate.
But in 2011, Cuthbertson said Sloboda expressed for the first time that she wanted a tax receipt of $4,000 for the donation because she claimed that’s what she could sell it for.
“Wendy replies to my email stating that she is not in a position to take a financial loss on the specimen,” he wrote to the RCMP.
Finally, in September 2012, Sloboda let Cuthbertson keep the fossil, he said. In an effort to restart the donation process, Cuthbertson sought advice in April 2013 from staff at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. They notified the RCMP.
The RCMP took custody of the fossil and brought it to the museum to be inspected. Henderson noted how well it had been preserved and its “potential to be extremely useful in improving our understanding of not only the evolutionary development of (ichthyosaurs) but also how they are related to other reptiles.”
With that authentication, Canada’s heritage department notified the Chinese embassy and, in September 2015, the Chinese government formally requested the fossil’s return and expressed its “deep gratitude.”
Asked what lesson had been learned, Sloboda said: “Don’t buy fossils off eBay.”
The other fossil, meanwhile, never made it into the hands of the intended recipient, court records show. As soon as it arrived in Edmonton in October 2009, it was detained by border officers on suspicion it might be foreign cultural property.
The sender, a “Mr. Li” in Shanghai, described the contents on the air waybill as a “stone carving” with a value of US$80.
The Chinese embassy was told of the seizure and asked for its return in late 2011.
Reached by phone this week, Arnston said his friend in China who sent him the fossil had no idea it might be real.
Arnston said he wasn’t sure how his friend acquired the fossil, but neither put up a fuss when authorities got involved.
“We were like, OK, if they want it back, sure.”