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Fossil Basics: Real or Fake?

Today is the first day of the new year so, I hope you have a great year and Happy New Year. Yesterday we had a fossil collector's gathering at a member's house and it was both fun and informative. As a fossil collector that started this only over a year and a half, it was my first time there. Anyways, that will be for another post which will come soon. However, this week, we are going to be looking at how to distinguish fakes from the real deal fossil and also, which fossils are commonly faked.

Real keichousaurus (left) vs a carved specimen (right)

How much fossils are fakes?

This is not an easy question to answer but some studies have shown that about 20-30% of the market of fossils are fakes. Fakes that even a trained eye can over look it. The most famous example would be Nat Geo's run in with a bad story. The Archaeoraptor fossil was introduced in 1999 and hailed as the missing evolutionary link between carnivorous dinosaurs and modern birds. It was fairly quickly exposed as bogus, a composite containing the head and body of a primitive bird and the tail and hind limbs of a dromaeosaur dinosaur, glued together by a Chinese farmer. From this we can already tell there are a few categories of un-reals as I would call them because like Archaeoraptor, the fossil is not faked but the chimera combination is what is fake. (What I am saying is that the individual parts of the fossils are real to the specific species but when it is Frankenstein it represents a whole new fake species)

  • Complete fakes - are usually resin casts on real slabs of matrix or sometimes even concrete

  • Heavily Restored - Fossils that are partly real but made up with resin or other materials to make it look whole (this helps the specimen to fetch a higher price)

  • Chimera/Frankenstein - A combination of different often real fossil parts and pieced together to make a fascinating but unreal specimen

Scans of the Archaeoraptor fossil which shows in coloured image on right the different parts of the raptor which is actually made up of different specimens

  • Minor restoration - Some part of the fossil is missing and added on during preparation to make it look complete and to fetch a better price

  • Mass mortality plates should also be generally avoided because much of these are actually assemblages of many specimens pieced into one big matrix to look like it was found whole. This of course drives prices up and are much more lucrative in terms of time for the sellers.

How to tell if they are faked?

The rule of thumb here is to look at the price. Do your market research and look out at the price point. If the price point for a Pachypleurosaurus is way below the market price maybe your ought to check closer if the specimen is for real. More often than not, too good a deal is NEVER a good deal.

Then again we look at price. Be mindful that cheap fossils are not economical to fake so if you are asking me if your $20 trilobite is faked, then I would say to you that it is probably not. Who has time to fake that when they could be faking a thousand dollar cash cow of a mosasaur skull? Avoid specimens that are commonly faked i.e. churned out from a sweat shop/factory. These include but are not limited to insects in rosins/resin (spiders, terrapins, fish, shrimp, cicada, scorpions, lizards); chinese fossils on matrix (turtle, lizards, mammals, dino-birds etc), keichousaurus and Sinohydrosaurus , spiny trilobites from Morocco etc Always do your research prior to purchase to avoid being disappointed later that you bought a fake. Search for ways to tell if the specimen you are aiming for is real or fake and key features to look out for (e.g. the eye patterns in trilobites are notoriously difficult to imitate and is a good way to tell if a fossil is real or fake) Some ways to easily tell they are real or fake is to use UV light. Sometimes this light can reveal restorations, imperfections, touchups and even if it is made of resin. This is because certain resin and adhesives do react under UV light and fluorescence. Buy from a reputable source. The better you know the seller and the higher his reputation is the better your chances of not encountering a fake fossil. Most people in the trade will be able to identify a fake fossil pretty easily but some fossils are so good that even the trained eye have difficulty picking them out. You however have to watch out for the eBay reputation. A high review rate might not signify a good and reputable seller. Always check if the seller sells fossils or have earned his reputation by seller much cheaper stuff like phone cases etc. Sometimes the vendors do that to gain reputation and with that reputation play on people's trust in the system and rip them off a huge sum.

Fake vs Restored

We have to face the fact that mother nature is not perfect and since fossils are a product of mother nature, they are often also not perfect. Of course the chances of a perfect one is very slim but they still can occur even if I say they probably don't. Most fossils then have some sort of restoration to make them look whole.

Depending on the skill level of the preparator, the prep can involve using resin or other materials to make up the missing or less desirable parts of the fossil. Some commonly restored fossils are trilobites and some repairs and restorations can easily be distinguished under UV light which exposes the resin/fillers in all its florescent glory.

Psittacosaurus skull under UV light(top) an without(bottom). The different fluorescent shows bones of different origins and/or filler material that is different from bone

A trilobite that shows a small degree of touch up/restoration to the body and a little to the head

I hope that the above information has at least helped you somewhat to learn how to tell the fakes from the real. Remember, if a deal is too good to be true, it often isn't real and you will be better off putting your money to other uses. Shop with confidence in my store as sell genuine specimens as I have checked them myself and get them from reputable sellers. Unless otherwise stated, all my specimens will have detailed description on how much is restored or it is 100% genuine. I do however also sometimes sell casts/replicas in which it would be explicitly said. But anyways, Happy New Year and I hope the year ahead goes well for us all!

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