Posted on behalf of Rex Dalton and Roberta Kwok

After nearly 20 years, US scientists have won approval for a law that seeks to protect vertebrate fossils found on federal lands. The US Vertebrate Paleontological Resources Preservation Act was included in omnibus land management legislation signed into law on 30 March by President Barack Obama.

The bill means a permit is needed to collect any scientifically significant vertebrate fossil, officials say. But it would allow ‘casual collecting’ of common fossils. Details of how the law will be applied are yet to be finalized. Officials at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology have pushed for the legislation because of the widespread practice of commercial collecting, where important specimens may be sold and not recorded in the scientific literature.

Among its hodge-podge of other items the bill also designates about 800,000 hectares of land as wilderness, preventing oil and gas development in those areas, and protects more than 1,600 kilometres of rivers. It establishes a new national monument in New Mexico’s Robledo Mountains, where 280-million-year-old animal footprints have been found.

A significant chunk of the bill is dedicated to marine research, including initiatives for ocean exploration, ocean and coastal mapping, observing systems, and ocean acidification research and monitoring.

True to the catch-all nature of such ‘omnibus’ legislation it also, through the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act, gives authority to the National Institutes of Health to coordinate paralysis research.