KEMMERER, Wyo. (AP) - Flying his patrol plane over the scrubland, Steve Rogers notes five or six areas of freshly overturned earth. He sees a faint cloud of dust and veers over for a better look. A herd of pronghorn antelope, he suspects. They are not what Rogers is searching for aboard his high-soaring Cessna. On this expanse of frozen terrain where 50 million years ago tropical and subtropical plants and animals thrived along two freshwater lakes, Rogers is hunting fossil thieves. Protected by the vastness of the West, the looters plunder the rich ground of fossils - hoping for perfectly preserved specimens that typically will be displayed on rock slabs or inlaid in countertop and floor tiles as home decor. Since the 1980s, commercial and scientific groups have clashed over how to manage fossils on public land. Moves in Congress to open up the land to commercial interests have stalled, as have efforts by scientists to protect fossils more extensively. As a result, investigators say fossils, valued by scientists for their portraits of prehistoric times, are being destroyed or stolen and sold worldwide on a burgeoning black market. As a pilot and investigator for the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department, Rogers has received death threats at his unlisted home telephone number and seen a ``wanted'' poster of himself, offering $40,000 for his capture. He once found his two house cats on the front porch with their necks broken. ``I guess I'm too dumb to be scared off,'' he said. The Green River Formation, as Rogers' beat is known, draws worldwide interest from scientists and commercial dealers because of its abundant, well-preserved marine specimens. One area, known as ``the turtles'' for its turtle fossils, ``is a known high-crime area,'' he said. But while paleontologists dig up fossils carefully from the strata, studying under what conditions the animals lived and died, fossil thieves tend to hack away with screwdrivers, shovels or other tools. They toss aside the less valuable fossils. ``It's unbelievable. They are throwing away more fossils than they are taking,'' Rogers said. Fossil sales are booming over the Internet, in rock shops and art galleries. Prices range from $5 to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on rarity and intricacy. Top-dollar fossils depict perfectly preserved skeletons, feathers and even the skin markings of animals.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The Iraqi Museum has recovered more than 5,000 artifacts from southern Iraq, some that had been buried for nearly 5,000 years, the country's chief archaeologist said Wednesday. The finds were made at three little-known sites that date back to the Sumerian civilization of 3000 to 2000 B.C., said Rabi'ya al-Qaisy. The museum rushed excavation teams to the area following reports that antiquity smugglers were pilfering the sites, he said. Iraq is in a race with antiquity traffickers who are believed to have intensified their scavenging of ancient sites in southern Iraq despite heavy penalties. Foremost among the recovered artifacts are scores of cylinder seals which Iraqis used as signatures in the Sumerian period, said Raya Younis, a scientist at the museum. ``Some of the impressions on these seals, as well as their size and manufacture, are unique to the long history of Mesopotamia,'' she said. Some seals show lions hunting gazelles and goats. Other show revelers drinking alcohol, mainly beer, which the Sumerians made from barley and dates. One signature depicts a sick man on a bed with physicians preparing herbal medicine while a mythical bird - the enzu - hovers overhead. The enzu has the head of a lion and the wings of a falcon. Raya said it was the symbol of Ningersu, the Sumerian god of death and war. ``These are fascinating seals of which only a handful exist in world museums,'' Raya said. The archaeologists also found clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform. One tablet details the food rations that the Sumerians used to pay civil servants, soldiers and workers.
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