Video and photos: sabre-toothed cat skull up for auction at Dallas’ Heritage Galleries this weekend

... including a brief rumination on the moral ambiguity of collecting natural history.

by John P. Meyer

When I was actively involved with the Dallas Paleontological Society, we members were wont to express our mixed emotions whenever the subject of the private sale of fossils - particularly fossils of the vertebrate variety - came up.

To be sure, the extravagant prices to be realized made the collecting of decorative-quality (and/or museum-quality) pieces an attractive prospect for anyone with the skills and tools to successfully extract such rarities from the deposits of eons past.

(Sadly, it also made the undertaking attractive to those who only thought they possessed the requisite skills - resulting in who knows how many destroyed Apatosaur femurs and mammoth tusks over the years.)

Plus, we (the amateur paleontological community) knew that there was more to the collecting of a fossil than just its extraction and preservation: its disposition in the rocky layers, the associated fossils and the sediment alterations found around it - all this could be as important to the scientists who were attempting to advance our knowledge of prehistoric beasties as the fossil itself.

And yet... museum staff can handle only so many digs. Dinosaur and ancient mammal fossils turn up all the time, more of them than all the active paleontologists in the world could ever hope to preserve. Once the fossils are exposed to the elements (by wind, rain or backhoe) they immediately begin to erode and decay, until all that's left are fragments - or dust.

So maybe there is a place for the private commercial collecting and trade in vertebrate fossils. At least the folks at Dallas' Heritage Auction Galleries think so, and they're putting on a major natural history auction this Sunday (May 17) to drive home the point.

I spoke with David Herskowitz, Director of Natural History at Heritage on Friday, as he was showing the items in this Sunday's auction to prospective bidders. Upon my arrival (at their showroom in the design district, at 1444 Oak Lawn), David was talking to a gentleman with an intense interest in this equally intense green tsavorite gemstone, which actually hadn't made it into the display cabinets yet. I browsed around on my own while David attempted to find it for the fellow.

(No problem there - I had a lot to look at. Stuff like mammoth tusks, raptor skulls and a meteorite that had crashed through the roof of a home outside Chicago and ended up in a police evidence bag.)

As the video begins, David is standing in front of a wall covered with fossil fish plates (probably from the Green River formation in Wyoming, though I didn't verify this). As he warms to the conversation (he is clearly as enthusiastic about the pieces in the offering as anyone who might be bidding on them), he begins ambling about from one case of specimens to the next.

My video and snapshots in no way do justice to the items in this collection, so I wholeheartedly suggest browsing the online catalog if you have any interest in bidding. (Or just drooling.)

Watch Interview with David Herskowitz in News  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com