Fake fossils are among us, going almost unnoticed in the eyes of experts around the world. This is a serious problem — falsified specimens can mislead paleontologists into studying an ancient past that never existed.
In a new study, my colleagues and I reveal a surprising truth about a fossil celebrated for decades as one of the best preserved in the Alps.
O Tridentinosaurus antiquus was a small lizard-like reptile that lived during the Permian period (299-252 million years ago), where the Alps are located today.
Discovered in 1931, the specimen was valued for what scientists thought were charred traces of skin visible on the rock surface. Generations of paleontologists thought the fossil was genuine, perhaps the oldest animal mummy ever discovered. This is partly due to the fact that the type of preservation is rare.
The fossil has been mentioned in books and articles, but has never been studied in detail with modern techniques. Experts were unsure which group of reptiles the fossil belonged to. Our study hoped to resolve this and other long-standing debates among scientists.
But our team discovered that the skin is, in fact, fake. What was thought to be well-preserved charred skin was merely a carved lizard-shaped body impression covered in black paint.
The fossil, however, is not entirely fake. The bones of the hind limbs, especially the femurs, appear genuine. We also found some tiny bony scales (called osteoderms, like crocodile scales) preserved on what was perhaps the animal’s back.
It was from our preliminary investigation using ultraviolet photography that we revealed that the dark-colored body outline and all of these bones and scales had been treated with some type of coating material. Coating fossils with varnishes or lacquers used to be standard practice over the past two centuries—and is sometimes still necessary to preserve fossil specimens in museum cabinets and displays.
We expected that under the coating layer, the original soft tissues would still be in good condition. But chemical techniques revealed that the material was actually a type of black paint made from animal bones, meaning the skin was in fact entirely forged.
Unfortunately, this means we will never know what the original fossil actually looked like.
The circumstances behind this falsification are unknown, but we know that it occurred before 1959 — the date of the official scientific description of the fossil. However, this discovery is a reminder of how important it is to record such specimens and combat fossil forgeries.
The History of Fossil Forgeries
The history of fossil falsification dates back to the beginnings of Paleontology itself, with the first reports dating back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
It was mainly motivated by the lucrative market for selling fossil specimens to private collectors and museums. For example, an original specimen of Archeopteryx (an avian dinosaur) was sold for today’s equivalent of £85,000 (approximately R$535,000) in the early 1860s. Some people also faked fossils for scientific and social recognition purposes.
Famous examples span a variety of fossil types, from Piltdown Man (1912), an elaborate hoax that involved constructing a hominid from an amalgam of human and ape bones; until the Archaeoraptor (1990), a chimera (reconstructed fossil with elements from more than a single species or genus of animal) formed by parts of different dinosaur skeletons to form a new specimen that was initially reported in National Geographic magazine as genuine in 1999.
Other examples include cases of partial skulls of extinct mammals that were completed with bones made from plastic. Sometimes a mixture of cement, resins, rock fragments and dust is used for this type of forgery. Forgers may also use dark brown or black paint to change the appearance of poorly preserved specimens that would otherwise be of no interest to researchers or collectors.
This happened in the case of Mongolarachne chaoyangensis, supposedly a giant spider found in China. It was discovered to be a poorly preserved crayfish after paleontologists took a closer look the same year the first article about it was published, in 2019.
Scientists have discovered that natural history museums around the world have counterfeit specimens in their collections. While new technologies are helping to study fossils of trilobites, a type of ancient marine invertebrate, in more detail, they are also revealing that many specimens are fake.
The same is happening with the remains of animals and plants fossilized in amber (tree resin that preserves fossils), acquired in historical times and only recently analyzed in detail with modern techniques.
The fake fossil market is a big problem these days. This happens mainly in countries with less regulation. The fossil trade in Morocco alone reaches US$40 million (around R$200 million) per year — and supplies fossil exhibitions around the world.
Meanwhile, colonialism stifled local knowledge in South America and, as a result, a large number of studies of fossils from the region are based on specimens illegally transferred to collections in other countries, particularly Germany and Japan.
We need governments around the world to introduce strict laws to protect the global paleontological and geological heritage.
The case of Tridentinosaurus antiquus serves as a warning. We believe our research can guide fossil conservation practices that are no longer appropriate, such as painting over fossils, and in turn, outline more ethical steps to take when a fossil is discovered.
For example, the state of a fossil at the time of discovery must be recorded in detail—along with information about when and where it was found, and how it was prepared and preserved. Flourishes should be avoided.
We may not be able to stop the manufacture of fake fossils, but we are here ready to unmask them and protect our wonderful fossil heritage.
* Valentina Rossi is a postdoctoral researcher in paleontology at University College Cork, Ireland.
