The Size of the Fossils-For-Sale Market

[Richard W Travsky <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

Came across an interestingt article on the selling of fossils

  http://www.latimes.com/news/front/20010122/t000006225.html

(note - LA Times web articles don't hang around long)

Some specific examples of selling, the usual arguments against, etc, but
the one thing I saw that I hadn't seen before was the size of the market:

 The sale of fossils is big business, bringing in about $40 million
 annually. 


That's a lot of fossils. I knew there was a lot of selling, but wow,
forty megabucks worth? How can museums and research organizations 
compete with people with money like that?