[Rockhounds] Court Rules Fossils are Minerals

[Alan Silverstein]

Here's a bit from me, based on some personal experience and a little web
searching:

> Wouldn't a court rule somewhere along the lines that fossils collected
> before this change would be lawful to those that already own them
> under old laws?

Not necessarily.  As I suspected, legislation is rarely retroactive,
while court decisions usually are...  Think in terms of "righting a
longstanding wrong" through a court case.  For example, I found this
snippet:

    Legislation ordinarily does not apply retroactively to conduct
    occurring prior to its adoption but only to actions taking place
    after enactment.  Indeed, the potential unfairness of some
    retroactive legislation is so great that certain forms of
    legislative retroactivity are specifically prohibited by the
    Constitution...

    Judicial decisions, on the other hand, ordinarily are retroactive in
    application...

> ...wouldn't it now be easier to secure "fossil rights" by purchase
> from said mineral owners...

Probably harder, not easier.  In many places, surface and mineral rights
are often "severed".  Locating surface rights owners (within counties)
is usually much easier than searching for mineral rights owners, which
(in my limited experience) usually requires hours of physical searching
through records at a courthouse.  (This is something that, say, oil
company "landsmen" regularly do, resulting in proprietary databases
their companies use.)

And, mineral rights are more often split upon inheritance into much
finer portions than are surface rights.  While surface tracts can be
divided among heirs, this is mostly spacially unitary ("Bob gets the NW
1/4 and Sally gets the NE 1/4"), while the underlying mineral rights
(across one or many subdivided surface parcels) are co-owned by
potentially dozens of people or other legal entities.

For example, it's very common for oil companies to divide royalties
(typically 1/8 or 12.5% of the gross) across dozens of mineral rights
owners (underneath a single parcel) according to their "decimals" of
ownership.

> I would assume by making it a mineral, that more fossils would be
> recovered to be sold to museums and collectors?

Other searching around indicates to me that prior law and custom is that
fossils, especially petrified wood, is not considered "locatable" as a
mineral.

I'd appreciate corrections or refinements on the above from people who
know better than me.

Thanks,
Alan Silverstein