Bones Of Contention

The market for dinosaur fossils is soaring, thanks in part to a new generation of mysterious, moneyed collectors from Asia. Collecting dinosaur skeletons isn't a new phenomenon, and it's always attracted attention from the rich and famous.

In the late 19th century, wealthy Wall Street financiers like J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller funded professional expeditions to unearth dinosaur fossils. More recently – during the 2010s – Hollywood actors like Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio publicly bid on dinosaur bones. Many of the new crop of big-spending collectors are now based in Asia: secretive connoisseurs from China, Hongkong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines have collectively spent hundreds of millions of US dollars on fossils over the past decade.
 
While these fossils earn huge amounts of money for the fossil hunters who find them (and arguably would lie undiscovered if this wasn’t the case) many within the scientific community are outraged. Should an important specimen end up adorning a rich person’s living-room, especially if it deprives scientists of the opportunity to examine it, potentially forever?

Episodes: 2 x 60 minutes

Languages: English

Production year: 2025