The vertebrate line

Which of these are vertebrates

Shark tooth, megalodon tooth, fossil fish, petrified bone and dinosaur bone fragment. Five of the fifteen leaves in this group, and the first two are among the most widely traded fossils in the world.

Which are invertebrates or plants

Ammonite, belemnite, brachiopod, crinoid, fossil coral, gastropod, orthoceras and trilobite, plus fossil leaf. Nine of the fifteen, and the ones the casual collecting definition was written around.

And one that cannot be placed

"Fossil specimen" as a category could be either. That is precisely why identification is the first step rather than a cataloging nicety, and why a vague label is a problem rather than a convenience.

The line is in the definition, not in a list

Common invertebrate and plant paleontological resources. Vertebrates are not mentioned because they are not included, so there is no threshold or quantity for them to fall under.

Common is doing work too

Even among invertebrates and plants the exception reaches the common ones, as determined by the Secretary. An unusual invertebrate is not automatically within casual collecting just because it has no backbone.

Which does not make teeth unsalable

Shark teeth from private land with the owner’s permission, from a commercial quarry, or lawfully imported, are ordinary property. The point is that for these five the casual collecting answer is never the one available.

So the provenance question is sharper for them

For the nine invertebrates and plants there is at least a personal-use route that explains a specimen in a collection. For the five vertebrates there is not, so the land they came from is the only answer.

Identification is the gate, not the catalog entry

In most of this library identification is housekeeping. Here it decides which legal regime a specimen sits in, which makes it the first task rather than the last, and it is the reason a vague label costs more than it saves.

References