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Updated October 2026

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What this covers The exception, quoted Three limits in one sentence And it only exists on three agencies’ land What this is not The label is a federal matter So provenance comes before packaging References

If you sell fossils, the exception everyone cites was never written for you.

What this covers

Ammonites, trilobites, crinoids, brachiopods, gastropods, orthoceras, belemnites, fossil coral and fossil leaves, plus shark and megalodon teeth, fossil fish, petrified bone and dinosaur bone fragments. Fifteen leaves, one jar shelf, and two very different legal positions.

The exception, quoted

Casual collecting means the collecting of a reasonable amount of common invertebrate and plant paleontological resources for non-commercial personal use, by surface collection or non-powered hand tools, with only negligible disturbance.

Three limits in one sentence

Common invertebrate and plant, which excludes every vertebrate. Non-commercial personal use, which excludes anything collected to sell. And surface collection or hand tools, which excludes digging it out.

And it only exists on three agencies’ land

Casual collecting without a permit is allowed on land controlled or administered by the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Forest Service. Elsewhere on federal land, a resource may not be collected without a permit.

What this is not

It is not a ban on selling fossils. PRPA is about federal land. A fossil from private land collected with the owner’s permission is generally the owner’s property and lawfully sold, and state land has its own rules. Getting that distinction right matters in both directions.

The label is a federal matter

A person may not make or submit any false record, account or label for, or any false identification of, any paleontological resource excavated or removed from federal land. The card in the jar is the record.

So provenance comes before packaging

Which is why the first section here is about where a specimen came from. The 139 jars on this shelf are genuinely good display containers, and they are the easy half of this property.

References

16 U.S.C. 470aaa, the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act definitions. Paragraph (1) defines casual collecting as a reasonable amount of common invertebrate and plant paleontological resources for non-commercial personal use by surface collection or non-powered hand tools with negligible disturbance; (2) defines Federal land; (4) defines paleontological resource and excludes archaeological resources and cultural items. law.cornell.edu

16 U.S.C. 470aaa-3, Collection of paleontological resources. A resource may not be collected from Federal land without a permit; casual collecting is allowed without one on Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation and Forest Service land; and a permitted collection remains the property of the United States, goes to an approved repository, and its locality data is not released without the Secretary’s written permission. law.cornell.edu

16 U.S.C. 470aaa-5, Prohibited acts; criminal penalties. Paragraph (a)(3) bars selling, purchasing or offering to, where the person knew or should have known the resource came from Federal land; (b) creates a false labeling offense; (c) sets penalties of up to 5 years, or 2 years where value and restoration cost do not exceed $500; (e) exempts resources in lawful possession before 30 March 2009. law.cornell.edu

Written from federal statute, not from a prep lab. PRPA covers federal land; private land, state land and tribal land each answer to different rules, and foreign fossils bring export law with them. Nothing here is advice on a particular specimen, and the permit questions belong to the managing agency.