Pssst, Wanna Buy A Raptorex Skull?

“Sereno, who has conducted extensive fieldwork in the region, says he has visited villages where the fossil trade is the livelihood for the majority of residents… He recalls entering one tunnel in China, guided by candlelight, that was dug by hand about 900 feet into the side of the mountain. ‘There were no wood supports or anything. It was so deep in the side of the mountain, it actually went through an entire valley,’ he says. ‘There is an untold number of people-probably not thousands, but hundreds-that have been buried alive in the course of trying to find these dinosaurs.’”
–Interesting Indiana-Jonesy story in Popular Mechanics about University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno-who discovered the previously unknown raptorex last year (that’s the one that’s like a mini tyrannosaurus rex)-and the booming international black-market for smuggled dinosaur fossils.