This has been a big problem with illuminated manuscripts such as books of hours (which represent massive amounts of beautiful medieval art and calligraphy). For centuries, some bookdealers have been willing to disbind a complete or nearly complete volume and sell individual leaves, because of course people love to be able to display a beautiful page on their wall.
I just went to an antiquarian book fair and there was a dealer selling medieval illuminated manuscript leaves (who's been there for many, many years), with a sign specifically addressing the concern, and basically saying "we didn't do it!". But it's hard to verify and the incentive is still strong, because you can get more from selling a hundred-page illuminated prayerbook as 100 $1000 leaves than as a $40,000 whole.
Overall I think people who care about the past in certain ways would prefer for artifacts to remain whole, even if that means we don't get to own them ourselves, much as with King Solomon proposing to cut the baby in half.
Sorry, I might be stupid, but I'm not sure what you're saying. What _is_ the critical issue? Generally destroying objects?
There is some spectrum between a usable item and complete refuse, it feels like most of the stuff being cut up is closer to refuse, but I could be very wrong.
Destroying objects that have historical value (which is distinct from collectible value).
As an exaggerated example, you wouldn't chop up a Dead Sea Scroll into tiny fragments just because it's useless as bedtime reading. The fact that collectors would be willing to buy very tiny pieces of dead sea scroll (perhaps collectively netting more than the sale of a single intact scroll) doesn't make it okay.
Many usually come with some sort of certification, and if you buy from a reputable source there is very little reason to worry.
These are so common and cheap that it would be more expensive to create a passable replica.
So in many cases even the "fake" ones are not fake they are just shark, alligator or any other more recent reptile rather than a dinosaur when it comes to teeth.
Morocco isn't a good place to buy teeth if you don't know what you are looking for simply because the local peddles don't know better.
And shark teeth and crocodile teeth are also very common.
Vertebrae are among the cheapest parts of a dinosaur. Spinosaurus isn't an especially rare dinosaur. Morocco, where they sourced this, sells dinosaur bone by the crate-load (literally). It's also a hotbed of fakes and mediocre pieces fixed up to look nicer than they are, so DO NOT buy anything from Morocco unless you know exactly WTF you are doing. This piece was destined to be sold to a dupe at a huge mark-up for use as a paperweight anyway. No great loss.
Mosasaur is an impressive but common fossil in Kansas. You can offer a museum there a complete skull for free and unless it's remarkable for some reason they'll turn you down (or take it and sell it if they're shady, I guess). Complete skeletons aren't uncommon in private collections. Probably one of the easier impressive-looking ancient predators to acquire to hang over the entryway in your secret lair if you're a budget-consious supervillain. A hunk of jaw not connected to a larger find is a trash-tier item among Kansan collectors.
I'm guessing the story's similar for most of the other things on there (I don't know much about the rest).
[EDIT] I hadn't noticed how many of these things are fossils on my first look, so I guess I do know about more of them.
Broken Megalodon teeth are also so common that you couldn't give them away to a collector or museum—they have little to no value except for impressing kids or use in an art project (so, like this). That's not to say it doesn't cost money to get one, but they're not remotely rare. A large, whole (including ROOT and TIP!) one with intact, finely-detailed serration? That's another matter, but that's not what this is.
Broken dire wolf jaw, not that rare or scientifically valuable. Dunno about the Ankylosaur pieces but judging from the rest, probably not rare.
Don't know much about giant sloth fossils, but claws in general tend to be among the rarest single pieces of any given megafauna. Wouldn't be surprised if that cost them more than any of the other animal fossils to acquire. Still, unlikely it's anything a museum would care to have.
Jurassic tree: common enough you can buy really big, polished slices of it for under $100 if you know where to go. Unimproved, large hunks for less. My great-grandma had a an ~20lb piece eroding away in her rock garden, and she didn't even live near where you can pick it up off the ground and wasn't really into fossil collecting.
Crinoid: another Moroccan piece so this was going on the suckers' shelf at a touristy rock & fossil shop anyway. Not sure about this particular variety, but there are thousands of segments of these in the rocks outside my kids' school, and probably tens of thousands more in the creek next to it, all eroding away.
Mind, I don't mean to knock this product, just noting that destroying these fossils wasn't any kind of blow to science or global heritage or anything.
Nothing wrong about owning them and preserving them but I feel bad about destroying them, if not for scientific purposes.
There are many of them but they are non-renewable. There is a finite supply of them.
And if we create market demand for them they might go very quickly. This is how we pushed rhinos into extinction. Rhinos seemed at some point to be very abundant, now they're gone for good.
Do you know how many fossils end up each day in aggregate and gravel?
The vast majority of fossils even those which are scientifically collected have no real value or use, many of them can't even be sold as cosmetic paper weights and are often disposed off simply because they take too much space.
Egyptian mummies, especially mummified animals such as cats, were acquired en-masse to be processed into fertilizer. I also do not think it is the ideal use for ancient items.
It's not the same thing, marine fossils make up many types of aggregate.
Pretty much any aggregate that is dug from places that used to be under water and is made out of sediment and marine rocks is made out of fossils.
If you go to Morocco, Utah, Jordan Valley and 100's of other places around the world you can just spend some time pick up pretty nice looking specimens and go home.
The 100 millionth dinosaur tooth or jawbone really doesn't add any value not to mention the 100 gazillionth coronoid that would otherwise end up in your parkway or your cat's litter box.
Coal mining alone probably destroys dozens (could be a vast underestimate) of absolutely incredible, actually scientifically valuable fossils every single day. Source: have sifted through what's left when they're done.
[EDIT] point being, losing a handful of not-very-impressive pieces for this is nothing.
I'm not saying we are not destroying valuable things, but these are not valuable.
If you go to places like morocco they sell the "nice ones" in large baskets on the market or on a side of the road, the ones that would end up in this kickstarted look like the gravel that is just naturally there.
The ancient Egyptians had a sort of after-life postal system, where you wrote a message and gave it to a priest and they stuffed it into a plaster mold, killed a dog, stuffed that in there, sealed it with plaster and gave it to a runner to take to the current crypt where it was unceremonially tossed onto an enormous pile. Did this many times a day, seven days a week for 500 years. The sites have dozens of buried crypts 8X8X30 or 40 feet, along a corridor, many corridors at a site, many sites across Egypt. During busy times they cut the dogs up into pieces (not enough dogs for the rush times) to satisfy the demand.
There's nothing particularly important or special about the animal mummies that used to be processed into fertilizer. Just enormous piles of plaster, bone and dust in underground chambers, enough chambers to boggle the mind.
No-one with the interest and means to preserve these fossils would have taken them for free. They're already giving/throwing away nicer pieces than these because they're out of space.
Very clever and a pleasing way to have some conversations. Much like a brightly painted Pet Rock. Good for the Inventor, I hope he enjoys much success! It actually kind of inspires me to make a tongue-in-cheek version as a gift for people in my close circle that would get a kick out of a cutting from "First Shiner Bock Can of Summer 2017" and "Blood splotched tissue sample from getting poked while changing guitar string" pressed between glass. Too fun.
I read about an enterprising person in the 1960s who swiped the dirty bedsheets from a hotel room that Beatles had slept on. The sheet was cut up into 1 inch square pieces and sold for a buck each.
