Criticized for using fossil ‘stolen’ from Brazil, study in Germany says northeastern dinosaur was an agile hunter | Sciences

German and French scientists revealed new details about a dinosaur that lived in northeastern Brazil. They analyzed a fossil found in a museum collection in Germany: a tomography of a skull Challenger irritant The international team was allowed to claim that the animal was A The fastest and most versatile angler than previously imagined.

But the revelations of this research also spurred a new chapter in the debate about ethics in science, because removing fossils from Brazil is illegal. The skull of this specimen was smuggled out in the 1990s and taken to the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart.

In the summary below, make sense of the research findings and arguments in 8 items:

Fossil smuggling is unheard of or even a thing of the past. Even today, there are reports of parts being recalled that could be worth over a hundred thousand dollars. The most famous case is the fossil case Ubirajara Jubatus. It was also transferred to Germany in 1995 and is housed in the State Museum of Natural History in Karlsruhe.

Only in July last year, two years after the Federal Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation to investigate the fossil’s departure from the country, did the German authorities agree to return it to Brazil. However, this has not yet been done and there is no official date for the repatriation.

Fossils are resources of historical, scientific and cultural significance, explains Juan Cisneros, a paleontologist at the Federal University of Piauí.

“It would have enriched our scientific background, generated tourism and boosted the local economy,” Juan Cisneros assesses.

It is no coincidence that its scientific name Challenger irritant Refers to the word “annoying”. The well-known account is that when the fossil was smuggled out it appeared quite complete and well preserved. However, after careful analysis, it was revealed that part of the fossil’s structures was a hoax.

Smugglers reconstructed the missing parts of the skull to give the impression that the piece was more intact, which would increase the price to be paid for it. Upon discovering the hoax, the scientists were outraged and so the name was coined. There are also reports that the “irritation” was related to the delicate work of removing the follicles.

to g 1The lead author of the research, Marcus Schade, said an elongated snout and a ridge above the eyes were identified as prostheses when the museum received the piece. It had gone through various cleanings, but traces of the inlaid material could still be found even during this last sweep.

“In fact, from our CT data, we are still finding some small foreign bodies around the middle of the skull that don’t seem to belong there. It doesn’t seem very unlikely that, in earlier times, plaster would have been included in the fossil,” said the German researcher. We cannot establish with certainty the identity of the foreign bodies we have found.”

According to Marco Scheid, the paleontologist who led the study, one of the most surprising findings is that an irritant would have a relatively weak bite compared to other dinosaurs of the time, but exceptionally fast.

“(…) many anatomical changes brought about by evolution explain the relatively odd appearance of these dinosaurs, which were probably specialized for capturing relatively small and agile prey,” Shady explains.

In addition, the inclination of the snout at an angle of 45 degrees may have been a factor that facilitated some degree of three-dimensional vision in the animal’s field of view.

The Irritator family lived in the Cretaceous period, which spanned between 145 and 65 million years ago.

The irritant may have been found in Araribe basin, located between the states of Ceará, Pernambuco and Piauí, which contains fossils of animals and plants that lived 110 million years ago. There is no exact indication of where the smugglers excavated it, and the German Museum has not done research on the subject.

On social networks, the Brazilian paleontologist community has shown displeasure with the fact that the new study offers few general clues about the disputes involved in the piece’s origin. Criticism includes not only German and French researchers, but also the scientific journal, which accepted to publish an article with an ethical statement considered “extremely fragile”.

In the text, the authors acknowledge the “potentially problematic status” of the fossil, but try to argue that the purchase was made before the export restrictions of the 1990 Brazilian regulations, an argument that experts say is wrong.

interrogated by g 1 On the issue, researcher Marcus Schade said he was “unable to assess the criticism firmly.”

“The aim of our ethical statement was to add some background information about the history of the sample and the whole subject matter as we understand the aspects mentioned. It may be worth noting that our considerations on this complex subject are not identical in all the details and the nuances of the controversies are diverse; we have to consider some of the criticisms made It was directed to us, but at the moment we cannot say (if it is true), ”justified the researcher.

Allysson Pinheiro, director of the Plácido Cidade Nuvens Museum, Carrere Regional University (URCA), said there are many negotiations underway to recover many of the Brazilian fossils scattered in museums around the world. However, the process is slow, bureaucratic, and requires Emirati intervention.

For paleontologist Juan Cisneros, Brazil has to fight to repatriate the fossil and bring it back to Ceara, strengthening local centers and national science.

“When we demand the repatriation of this fossil, we are simply asking that the law be respected,” the paleontologist concludes.