New Rules for Amateur Paleontologists by US Forest Service

Glade Gunther spent his family time as a youngster collecting fossils.

Not at a museum play pit. Not in a backyard sandbox but on remote public lands, often in uncomfortable conditions.

Gunther has unearthed ossified remains of ammonites, trilobites and other ancient invertebrates that ended up in museums, research facilities and classrooms across the world. Now he and other amateur collectors say their ability to contribute to knowledge of ancient life is jeopardized by the way public-land agencies are interpreting the 2009 Paleontological Resources Preservation Act.

The U.S. Forest Service is gathering public comments until Monday on proposed regulations that limit "casual collecting." The regs cover most fossils from dinosaurs to leaves found on federal lands. But it is restrictions on invertebrates, those spineless creatures that proliferated in Cambrian seas, that have amateurs crying foul.

The Forest Service rules would limit collectors’ annual take to 25 pounds, or about what fits in a one-gallon bucket. In a calendar year, they could collect no more than five specimens of any one type of invertebrate. A fossil hunter could exhaust that limit before lunch, critics say.