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A work-in-progress of an Oviraptorosaur found in Djadokhta, Mongolia, and specifically a member of the sub-family Oviraptorinae, dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks, and rounded heads with-or-without crests. The crests are difficult to predict, and in some species, what are almost certainly females, seem to sport crests. It could be that males did have more prominent ones (some crests are very tall), but there are also fully mature individuals of species that have no crest at all. Uncrested species are sometimes very closely related to crested forms - anyway
because of how peculiar and special these dinosaurs are, they are among the most eaglerly poached and smuggled species, mainly from Mongolia.
The one drawn above is unnamed, unstudied, illegally smuggled and offered at an auction at 65 000 USD. Since these specimens are unnamed and uncatalogued, they are nearly impossible to keep track of, because they have no identifying tags. I do suspect this specimen is among a dozen that were indeed repatriated back to Mongolia after the Dallas-based auction-house being taken to court.
This is nice to see, but it is because Mongolia specifically bans the private ownership of fossils. Some countries, such as the US, permit private fossil trade, resulting in some spectacular finds, such as an un-studied species of Allosaurus, being sold off to private collectors, this one in particular sold in some Paris auction. That's *an entire species* owned by some French motherfucker
Out of 19 Oviraptorines I deemed complete enough to warrant an illustration, a whole five were poached. Two out of these five were confiscated, turned over to science, and one has since recieved a proper analysis and a name. The second is being analyzed and will be named soon. The third is the one I drew above here, which - if I'm guessing correctly - is back in Mongolian gvt hands and will recieve study and analysis in due time
The final two are still in private collections, they seem - to my knowledge - untraceable. Someone's going through efforts to not be held accountable, but casts of the originals are popular in online fossil-shops.
A frustrating side effect is that there's a lot of bad science stemming from this as well. Provenance of the fossils is often ignored or surmised, with errors-of-margin of millions of years at the time, basically rendering such details pointless. Smaller exhibitions will often display chimerae of different casts based on undescribed, unstudied specimens, cutting-and-pasting together, creating "generic but awesome-looking" oviraptorids, often labelled "Oviraptor" for no apparent reason, other than the name "Oviraptor" having a nice ring to it. Oviraptor itself is an actual species, studied, catalogued and firmly estabished. A dinosaur can only be Oviraptor if it turns out to be Oviraptor, it's not a matter of opinion, but a matter of comparing every bone to the original Oviraptor, and seeing that they match. As I said, there's around 20 named dinos in the Oviraptorinae group, only one of them is Oviraptor, the other 19 are other closely related animals. But this is science, and science is boring and doesn't sell well in auctions or small, exciting exhibits
I know this is a very nerd-privilege-king of frustration, but as a dino-geek it really irks me. Despite the unethicalness of it all, these fossils represent actual living animals. I want to include them in my guide, nameless, analysisless, provenanceless, because they were actual living, breathing beings, before becoming smuggled pieces of contraband
The above specimen is, in my guide, labelled simply "Online, Djadokhta"
Urgh...
