On December 25, 2001, the Chinese Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (CSVP) sent an open letter to  Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt, Germany, a leading natural history museum in Europe, expressing its regrets, disappointments and worries over the museum¡¯s purchase of a dinosaur fossil, which is believed to have been illegally exported out of China, as well as other deals on illegal fossils.

According to Chinese law, as the letter indicates, the export of all important vertebrate fossils is forbidden. Also, trading of smuggled fossils is emphatically discouraged by some international conventions, including the ¡°UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970)¡± and ¡°UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects (1995)¡± by the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT). ¡°It is our strong belief that any form of illegal collecting and trading of fossils from any country will only jeopardize the spirit of scientific research and further encourage more illicit collecting and underground trading of precious fossils,¡± the letter reads.

Fossils lose their scientific value during unscientific excavations fueled by the smuggling and collection of smuggled fossils. Frequently, information essential for scientific research, such as that about the locality and stratigraphy, will be lost forever because of unprofessional processing. ¡°We hold the belief that a responsible museum should not buy and deposit any smuggled fossil however justifiable it may seem,¡± insists the CSVP, ¡°and all conscientious scientists should not be involved in any trading or studying of the illegal specimens however important they may be.¡±

Recently Fritz Steininger, director of the Naturmuseum Senckenberg admitted that his museum had bought a piece of psittacosaurid fossil last summer from a German dealer. This dinosaur fossil mysteriously appeared on the Internet last August and attracted a lot of attention from paleontologists for its odd integument, which is absent from any known dinosaurs. What has vexed some paleontologists is that, further research would be frustrated by its dubious provenance. This controversial specimen was thought to have been unearthed from western Liaoning province, Northeastern China and then been smuggled from its motherland.

Fritz Steininger, argued that they had ¡°proper German importation documents and exportation records from the United States¡±, as what reported by Nature, but refused to comment when asked about documents from China.

This purchase is the newest one bothering Chinese vertebrate paleontological community. In the open letter the CSVP demands the restitution of other smuggled fossils, including Confuciusornis (¡°Kongziniao¡± in Chinese, a famous primitive bird) specimens as well, which were bought by Naturmuseum Senckenberg in the past.

CSVP stresses its stand against collection and purchase of illegal fossils, saying: ¡°We believe that all illegally exported fossils from China should be repatriated to institutions in China where they can be appropriately preserved and studied by scientists from all over the world.¡± (Song Jianlan)