In 2019, Mohamad Bazzi, a doctoral student at Uppsala University in Sweden, launched an expedition to Tunisia in search of fossils. He and his colleagues traveled to the phosphate mines in the city of Gafsa, where 56 million-year-old rocks are taking up a time of rapidly warming oceans and mass extinctions, especially of predators such as sharks.
Mr. Bazzi made some distinctive choices for this paleontological expedition.
To begin with, his team hired Tunisians to help dig, rather than bring students from his university. Mr. Bazzi and his colleagues also chose to reach out to the residents of Gafsa where possible. They held impromptu lectures on interested spectators about the fossil history of the area. This was in contrast to the mystery of many paleontologists in the field, who might be concerned about their fossil black market sites.
The fossils the team collected at Gafsa are important to know more about how animals adapted to the greenhouse world of the Eocene, a period that could predict what lies ahead on the planet in the coming years if carbon emissions are not delayed .
But while Mr. Bazzi’s team removed the fossils from Tunisia, they did so according to an agreement with local institutions on which Mr. Bazzi himself insisted: After completing his research, the surplus will be returned.
Historically, these specimens are rarely returned, and residents may never see them again. But Mr. Bazzi and his colleagues are part of a movement among the next generation of paleontological researchers, one that seeks to change scientific practices directly derived from 19th-century colonialism, exploiting indigenous peoples and their natural history.
Over the past few decades, several countries have demanded the return of art, antiquities, cultural treasures, and human remains from museum collections in North America and Europe. Countries such as Mongolia and Chile have also demanded that collected fossils, from tyrannosaurus bones, be returned to the preserved remains of giant sloths.
“There is a consistent pattern with these specimens of high scientific or aesthetic value, where they are taken from the developing world and sent abroad to be displayed and shown to a larger audience elsewhere,” he said. Bazzi said. “There needs to be some balance so that local parties can have a say in what happens to them.”
Many countries with less money to fund their own scientists are home to important fossil deposits that can advance progress in our understanding of the prehistoric world. If the field of paleontology wants to move forward, these researchers say, it is important to figure out how to study samples at these sites without expanding colonial heritage.
This will require the development of a different approach to the field, more like those that Mr. Bazzi and other scientists try, who rely less on withdrawal and more on collaboration with and the development of local institutions.
While many cultures in human history have long traditions around the collection or study of fossil remains, the discipline of scientific paleontology – as well as the formation of modern natural history museums – originated in the 18th century when European powers actively colonized large parts of the world. has. . According to Emma Dunne, an Irish paleontologist at the University of Birmingham in England, European scientists were part of a colonial network that sucked natural wealth – including fossils – into imperial capitals.
In the 20th century, some countries pushed back. Brazil and Argentina provide state funding for paleontology. These countries and others, such as Mongolia, have enacted laws banning the export of fossils within their borders. The two South American countries also recommend that foreign researchers work with local paleontologists to research fossils found in the country.
“You still have non-Argentine researchers working with local researchers,” said Nussaibah Raja-Schoob, a Mauritanian paleontologist based at the German University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. “But you certainly see a greater local influence.”
Even in the wake of colonialism, fossils from around the world still tend to end up in American and European museums. Some are collected by approved scientific expeditions. But because fossils are also traded privately, fossil-rich countries with fewer resources and legal protection are offered interesting and potentially valuable discoveries in Western markets.
Questions about where fossils belong and who is best suited to work on them have sparked sharp controversy over the past few years. In some cases, researchers have expressed concern about the ethics of the work on such privately collected fossils – especially those that may have been carried out illegally. At the same time, paleontologists in Western countries adhere to the rules required by countries such as Brazil.
In one case in 2015, David Martill, a paleobiologist at the University of Portsmouth in England, turned down questions about the lack of collaboration of his team with Brazilian researchers over a sample found there. “I mean, do you want me to have a black person on the team for ethnicity reasons, and a cripple and a woman, and maybe a homosexual just for a little balance?” he said in an interview with Herton Escobar, a Brazilian science journalist, at the time.
Dr Martill said in an interview in December that he had chosen his words poorly. But he said he was still opposed to laws that determine where fossils go. In 2020, he co-authored an article on another find made from Brazil and described without a Brazilian co-author.
“I do not think governments should determine who works on fossil fuels,” he said. “I think scientists need to be able to choose who they work with.”
This kind of controversy is one example of the way in which the discipline’s colonial history lingers, Raja-Schoob believes. But there are others. Much of the global paleontology is still done in languages such as English, German and French. And according to an ongoing research project by Ms. Raja-Schoob and Dr. Thin, countries with higher GDPs – places like the United States, France, Germany and China – tend to report more fossil data, in part because they have money to invest in academic paleontology programs.
Many institutions around the world do not have the tools or enough government support for advanced fossil fuels. But this is what scientific institutions from prosperous countries can help with.
“We need to ask why we are bringing this knowledge to the centers, rather than spreading it,” said Dr. Dunne said. ‘We can work with things like 3D scans of fossils, and we can work with digital data sets. The problem, of course, is getting funding for museums to do it for themselves. ”
Me. Raja-Schoob said academic funding could advance geology and paleontology in more countries.
“Why don’t you put the money in locals who do something?” she asked. ‘At the end of the day, we’re all going to use that data. Why then would they not also benefit? ‘
While the fossil richness found in the rocks of North Africa and the Levant has long attracted fossil hunters and scientists, Mr. Bazzi said most fieldwork resulted in fossils being exported to European or American institutions. Mr. Bazzi’s parents are from Lebanon, while his colleague Yara Haridy – a doctoral student at the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde – was born in Egypt. Due to the lack of opportunities, none of them can find steady academic work in paleontology in the Middle East.
As part of their trip to Gafsa, both wanted to try to build up paleontological sources instead of just removing them.
This was part of what Mr. Bazzi and me. Haridy – after many careful conversations with local participants over coffee and tea – led to the ruins of a museum in the small mining town of Métlaoui. The museum was burnt down during the protests of the Jasmine Revolution in 2011 which resulted in the Arab Spring. It has not been repaired, and on their third day in Tunisia, a mining expert told them it was worth a visit.
They walk cautiously through the ruins and find an unexpected wealth of fossil material: enormous tortoise shells, crocodile jawbones, dinosaur vertebrae and even ancient human remains, all scattered over dusty floors and charred debris.
The collection had to be rescued, the team decided, but not taken out of the country.
“Every other question we got was, ‘Oh, are you going to take this stuff?'” Haridy said. “And we told them, ‘No, it’s yours.’ It should stay here. It’s part of the region’s story. ”
Rather, they worked with the people of Métlaoui to help them save the surplus. The mayor of the city and other community authorities met local workers and students of Gafsa University within a day. Mr. Bazzi’s team handed out gloves and masks and a stream of Métlaoui residents went to work retrieving fossils from the ruins.
“It was a pretty big operation,” she said. Haridy said. “Everyone got really excited.”
The team cataloged the bones before boxing and sent them to a government facility in Gafsa. The hope is that the museum remains will provide the core for an ongoing paleontology program at Gafsa University; Mr. Bazzi helps supervise interested students.
One such student, Mohammed Messai, said he did not know much about paleontology before contacting Mr. Bazzi did not meet, however, that he has now identified the fossils recovered from the museum for his master’s degree in science.
It is important for paleontologists to build real partnerships with local researchers, Haridy said. This not only creates community involvement and encourages people to consider fossils worthwhile, but also to ensure that specimens are properly studied when they are returned to their country of origin.
“There is a problem where much of the paleontological knowledge does not necessarily come with it, even if a country requires fossils, as Egypt has done for a long time,” she says. Without investing in independent paleontology programs in the countries concerned, fossils can eventually be ‘sent to a dusty room, where no one knows what to do with them’.
But efforts to create more inclusive and distributed paleontological networks are facing significant headwinds.
“Funders do not necessarily place emphasis on the ethical side of research,” said Dr. Dunne said. “We rely heavily on other countries for their data. Fossils are worldwide, they are worldwide, they do not respect political boundaries. But we need to identify these patterns of colonial prejudice in our research and stop it. ‘
To some extent, the presence of these conversations is itself a sign of change.
“When I started paleontology about 45 years ago, these issues had no problem,” said Dr. Martill said. ‘They seem to dominate paleontological discussions today. Maybe it’s me who’s out of touch right now. ”
He added that “a fantastic new generation of paleontologists is emerging who are flexing their muscles and demanding different things.”
For now, the team of mr. Bazzi to raise money for local paleontology in Tunisia.
“Ideally, the Tunisian government alone would believe these people and agree that their fossils are important and worthy of preservation, and that they are of international importance,” she said. Haridy said. “But they tend to be interested once scientists are actively trying to visit people and actively work.”
“There are now local people who are starting to run it themselves,” he said. Bazzi said. “Ultimately, others do not have to do it.”