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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Parthicus, post: 5367596, member: 81887&quot;]As someone who also collects fossils, I can say that the issue of forgery and undisclosed restoration is at least as important in fossil collecting as in ancient coins.&nbsp; (Also, the question of laws about digging up and exporting specimens comes up too.)&nbsp; There are some fossils that are sold with no repair or restoration beyond removing excess sediment, some that have had minor repairs, some with major compositing (putting together fragments of two or more damaged specimens to make one nicer-looking piece), and some outright fakes.&nbsp; It&#039;s better if such repairs are noted by the seller, though many people who sell fossils commercially are not the same people who excavated them, so they may not always know about repair or restoration on a given specimen. There&#039;s a good online site, similar to CoinTalk, called The Fossil Forum that I like to read (and occasionally comment in):</p><p><a href="http://www.thefossilforum.com" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.thefossilforum.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.thefossilforum.com</a></p><p>The &quot;Is It Real?&quot; subforum is a good place to post photos of suspect specimens and get opinions whether a given specimen has undisclosed repair/restoration/etc.&nbsp; Note that, per Fossil Forum rules, offering estimates of monetary value is forbidden.&nbsp; (Imagine if we tried that on CoinTalk!)</p><p>On [USER=19165]@physics-fan3.14[/USER] &#039;s Green River fish specimen, it looks like the larger fish has had some darker sealant added to protect the thin fossil material from flaking off.&nbsp; This is common on fossil fish from that site and is generally acceptable.&nbsp; It also looks like the fine detail in the tail and anal fins might (I&#039;m not sure) have been painted on rather than being original to the fossil.&nbsp; Whether this would be acceptable varies depending on the collector, but I would probably not mind too much, as the fossil does seem to be overall real.&nbsp; It may be worth posting this over there to get more opinions (there are some amazing folks there, including professional paleontologists, who know far more than I do).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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