Martin Simpson, the island's biggest dealer- collector, led the pounds 4-a-head field trip. He has published learned papers on fossils. But he does not wear glasses and is not at all fossilised. He looks like a pirate and has a reputation to match. He whooped as he seized upon the biggest dinosaur fossil, half buried in the sand.
Rain drove the trippers back to their cars, where they sat contentedly wiping sand off their bits of Crunchie. Mr Simpson lobbed his big bit on to the dashboard ledge of his battered blue Ford van and revved up. We drove a mile or two down the coast towards darker fossil hunting terrain, where he has angrily confronted police, collectors and his arch-rival, the island's museum curator, over the remains of a very rare dinosaur indeed.
The site, near Blackgang, looks like a battlefield. It is under constant assault by the sea. Hundreds of tons of rock, earth and sticky
blue clay are strewn on the beach beside a rocky river gully, having fallen from the 200ft- high cliff during the past year's extra high tides and torrential rains.
There, last November, Lin Spearpoint, a former matron at an old people's home, bored with collecting the rounded 'beach-rolled' dinosaur fossils that fill trippers' pockets, poked a long-shafted screwdriver into a landslip of blue clay that was once the riverbed. It struck a nine-inch fossilised dorsal spike of a Polacanthus, an armoured dinosaur built like a tank that expired belly-up on the riverbed 115 million years ago. She took the spike home and told her husband: 'You're the second person to see this in 115 million years. I'm the first.'
Almost daily for four months, watched over by her Jack Russell terrier, Mrs Spearpoint squeezed blue clay between her fingers, feeling for fossilised bones of 'Spike', the nickname she has given the Polacanthus, which means 'many spikes'. Then, she had no inkling of the heated palaeontological rivalries that would surface once the discovery became known.
Hundreds of fossilised dinosaur skeletons are being washed out to sea - faster than collectors can save them - along the 11-mile stretch of sandstone and clay where Spike lay buried. Known to geologists as the Wealden outcrop, its strata bent skywards by titanic geological forces, it is Europe's most prolific source of dinosaur fossils. For 160 million years, dinosaurs were as common there as cattle are today. Chunks of fossilised dinosaur are still found on the island propping up garden sheds and embedded in walls.
But Spike is no ordinary dinosaur. Only three other Polacanthus skeletons are known, and his is the most complete. None of the others has a humerus (upper arm), metatarsal (foot bone) or scapula (shoulder girdle). Some foreign collectors would pay pounds 20,000 for him. If he had a skull - which none of the others has - the price might double.
Mr Simpson was the first to identify the skeleton and dreams of owning it. It is the rarest dinosaur he has encountered in the field. His first brush with a bit of Spike, in March, was almost by chance. The tide had begun to gain on Mrs Spearpoint. Bones were being washed out to sea and big, unwieldy ones were emerging from the clay. Having sought the help of the island's Geological Museum at Sandown - whose curator, Steve Hutt, was in the United States - she showed some spikes to Mr Simpson at his fossil shop at the Blackgang Chine Fantasy Theme Park. 'Polacanthus]' he said, and started digging. It was the start of the island's 'dinosaur wars'.
Private collectors, also after the spoils, have cursed, waved sticks, and tried to oust him from the dig. Following these episodes police visited the site and questioned him on suspicion of theft of fossils. On one occasion a coastguard helicopter hovered overhead. The longest time he spent with police was six hours, mostly at Yarmouth police station, on the other side of the island. During that time, he says, a Polacanthus arm was swept out by the tide. He, Mrs Spearpoint and her husband, Dick, later recovered most of it.
Back from the US, Mr Hutt was alerted to the controversy when a local man brought him eight fossil neck bones belonging to Spike. He, too, took one look and said 'Polacanthus]'. The following day there was an angry confrontation at the dig between him and Mr Simpson.
Mr Hutt accused him of taking fossils without permission. Mr Simpson shouted at him: 'You hate me because you're jealous: I hate you because you hate me.' Similar impulses must have coursed through the neural pathways of dinosaurs confronting each other over the same riverbed 115 million years previously.
By law, fossils, like minerals, belong to the owner of the land on which they are found. Fossil hunters are obliged to seek permission to remove them. Beaches below high-water mark are more likely to be owned by the Crown or the National Trust than by individuals. Both these and other conservation organisations, such as the Nature Conservancy Council for England (English Nature), have drawn up guidelines for fossil hunting that are in broad agreement. They permit gathering of loose fossils (which might otherwise be swept away) but recommend that permission be sought for excavations and that fossils thought to be of scientific importance should be reported to the National Trust or a museum.
The beach where Polacanthus was found belongs to the Crown. The cliffs and other land above high-water mark belong to a farmer. Confronted by Mr Hutt, Mr Simpson retorted that he was not digging the farmer's land but 'abandoned' land-slip that had been washed from the cliff over the high-water mark.
Nevertheless, Mr Hutt escorted Mrs Spearpoint to meet the farmer, Richard Fisk, who the previous day had agreed to let him keep the eight bones. She agreed to give Mr Fisk 25 per cent of the proceeds, should the Polacanthus ever be sold.
Mr Simpson has never forgiven Mr Hutt for his intervention. The two now seem more irreconcilable than ever. Mr Hutt, who is a former policeman, told me: 'I've had enough of him. Anything to do with him, we back off very quickly.'
Mr Simpson's dinomania remains undiminished. He has proposed to the Spearpoints co- ownership of Spike and told them that he would like eventually to buy the skeleton out-right. He has plans. Spike would be the star turn at his proposed dinosaur museum at the Fantasy Theme Park. There would be Spike T- shirts, Spike mugs, Spike lapel badges. 'You've got to be commercial,' he says.
Visitors would be invited to 'meet the discoverers' and watch conservation work. Plaster casts of Polacanthus foxi (its full name) would be offered to museums worldwide at around pounds 1,000 each. The Spearpoints would share in the proceeds, he says.
'If I don't get the Polacanthus now, after all this effort, it will severely damage my career,' says Mr Simpson, with the gritty determination of one whose quest for fossils has resulted in both arms being broken in landslips and, on one occasion, being swept out to sea.
He has agreed a notional value of pounds 20,000 for Spike (which Bonhams, the auctioneers, say is about right). But Mrs Spearpoint, quietly spoken and resolute, says: 'We haven't got a signed agreement: nothing has been finalised.' The Spearpoints have received five offers from museums and collectors as far afield as Canada and Australia. The highest is pounds 20,000. They say they will decide at the end of the month.
Both the Spearpoints and Mr Simpson agree that the skeleton, sold or unsold, must be displayed on the Isle of Wight and remain available for research - forfeiting their chance of maximising its price in the booming international market in dinosaur fossils. Prices have risen to the equivalent of those paid by collectors at the height of Victorian dinomania. The going rate for common-or-garden 115-million- year-old duck-billed hadrosaurs - 'composite' specimens assembled from multiple remains from American quarries - is dollars 150,000 ( pounds 100,000). Cardiff Museum has one. For the greatest prize, a skull of a 70 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, the classic Jurassic Park dinosaur, American collectors will pay dollars 200,000- dollars 500,000 ( pounds 135,000- pounds 335,000).
The private collectors' market is more active than auctions. There are big annual fossil fairs in Munich in March, Denver in September and Tokyo in February. (Britain has nothing comparable.) Complete dinosaurs are virtually unknown at auction. Bonhams, which launched auctions devoted to fossils last year, watched bids falter at pounds 20,000 for a pterodactyl estimated at pounds 20,000- pounds 25,000 but got pounds 20,000 for an exquisite 8ft sable palm leaf.
Mr Simpson, who deals in common fossils, says dealers can get pounds 400- pounds 500 for an Iguanodon tooth and pounds 150 for a good dinosaur vertebra. His coprolites - melon-sized lumps of dinosaur dung sawn in half and polished inside - cost pounds 15. One of his shop's many whimsical notices invites buyers to 'leave a deposit' on them - superfluous, considering that they cost a twentieth of the price that uncut specimens have fetched at London science-themed auctions. The shop's beach-rolled dinosaur fossils cost a rock-bottom pounds 5 a pound.
The scholar and the salesman blend well in Mr Simpson: one minute he is being lyrical about the 14 species of fossil lobster he has discovered, the next he is relating how he once paid a farmer pounds 50 a day to follow his plough and remove a bed of 9,000 ammonites worth 50p each.
He would sell an Iguanodon skeleton for pounds 80,000, for they are common. But not a Polacanthus. That would be unthinkable. Selling scientifically significant specimens, especially abroad, is the worst jibe that one fossil collector can hurl at another. All the more embarrassing, then, that the clash between Mr Hutt and Mr Simpson over the Polacanthus in the local press revealed that each had sold a museum-quality dinosaur fossil.
Mr Simpson excuses his sale, for pounds 5,000 to Belfast Museum, of the leg bones of a rare Valdosaurus, 'reptile from the Wealden', found at Atherfield, Isle of Wight, on the grounds that the island authorities could not afford it, that it stayed in the country, and that he made only 10 per cent agent's commission.
Mr Hutt, accused by Mr Simpson of selling a fossil crocodile, also found near Atherfield, for pounds 4,000 to Stuttgart University, was defended in a letter to the local newspaper by a former colleague on the grounds that the deal had been done before he had joined the staff of the museum, and that the National Heritage Fund had refused grant aid to buy it. Mr Simpson is determined that the Polacanthus will not be sold abroad. There is no certainty he will get it, either, but he has made clear his interest in it in a variety of ways. He is offering a pounds 5,000 reward for the skull and has paid pounds 1,000 to beachcombers for 300 oddments of Spike fossil. He has promised the Fantasy Theme Park that Spike will be on display in his shop there next summer. Then there is Spike's government money: the pounds 3,000 grant he has negotiated from the Department of Trade and Industry's Enterprise Initiative Design Consultancy Scheme to help finance promotion. He has promised to match it pound for pound.
But the Spearpoints are not easily swayed. They spent more time this summer with Mr Hutt than with Mr Simpson. Mr Hutt gave them conservation materials and copies of academic papers on Polacanthus. Mrs Spearpoint says: 'Steve Hutt's chances of getting the Polacanthus are slim but he is a totally professional man and has given us his time and knowledge. I am very cross about the slanging match that has ensued between Martin and him.'
Since his involvement with the Polacanthus became public, Mr Simpson has embarked on a public relations offensive in an attempt to improve his image locally. This took a battering four years ago when he removed the naturally- formed fossilised cast of an Iguanodon foot from Compton Bay to display in his shop. Local people complained that the 17-stone footprint had been a familiar fixture that had fascinated schoolchildren on field trips organised by the National Trust. Mr Simpson claimed the National Trust had allowed him to remove it. The Trust denies it.
Gripped by the prospect of owning the Polacanthus, his eagerness to clear his name led him to telephone at home the editor of the local newspaper, the County Press, to encourage him to publish his letter containing allegations against his critics. 'Come on,' he urged him, 'you've had me as a thief in your paper for the past two months.'
The police no longer bother him, having been impressed, if not by his legal advocacy, at least by his appearance with Spike and Mrs Spearpoint on Blue Peter in April. 'Didn't we see you on the television?' they asked.
Meanwhile, Spike himself is scattered in five locations. Like Humpty Dumpty, he may never be put together again. Mr Hutt is adamant that the museum will not part with the skeleton's eight neck bones (though he would supply casts). Most of the rest of Spike is in plastic loaf trays in the Spearpoints' bedroom. Some chunky bits are on display in Mr Simpson's shop. There are cardboard boxfuls of bits in the back of his van and also among the 36,000 fossils that fill even the bath in his house, making it completely uninhabitable. (He lives in a rented beach chalet.) A few of the choicest bones have been lent to a palaeontology student in Dartford, Kent.
As for the missing skull - probably no bigger than a sheep's, once with horny beak and conker-sized brain - regulars at the half-timbered Wight Mouse Inn at Chale have a story or two to tell about it. One goes like this: two beachcombers spotted it. One put it in a plastic bucket, together with the rest of their booty - a lavatory chain and three snagged fishing weights. On reaching home, one asked the other 'Did you bring the bucket?' 'Course I did.' 'Then where's the rock I put in it?' 'Didn't think you wanted that old rubbish.'
Collecting fossils used to be a gentlemanly pursuit. The first of the four known Polacanthi came to light on the island in 1865 when Tennyson, the poet, with Professor Richard Owen, first director of the Natural History Museum, took tea at the home in Brighstone of the Reverend William Fox, who bought fossils from local fishermen. He had acquired the rear of a Polacanthus (then unnamed); the rest had been washed away. Owen published a paper. Later, Fox's widow sold the fossil to the British Museum. There was certainly no controversy.
The days of non-competitive collecting, both of specimens and data, are over. At the Wight Mouse, while tourist grockles graze at the bar, a different species moves in the twilight of the alcoves - young geologists and palaeontologists hungry for publishable data to further their academic careers. They are envious of Mr Simpson, who has five academic papers to his credit, even though his Glasgow University PhD thesis on macrurous decapod crustaceans (lobsters) is 12 years overdue.
Some of the keen young scholars are German. 'Do you still use a garden rake to dig specimens?' one asked Mr Simpson. The man had evidently seen a video clip of the Blue Peter programme. 'It wasn't a rake, it was a garden fork,' Mr Simpson snarled.
We retreated to the end of the table. Mr Simpson complained that, after he had taken the man on a geological field trip, he had nicked the name he had given to an unrecorded local stratum of rock. Later, he showed me the man's published paper. 'It's a geological congress paper,' he sneered, 'a sneaky way of getting into print using somebody else's ideas. I'm going to change the names of the strata and publish a definitive version in Proceedings of the Geological Association. I've learnt my lesson. I'm all for myself, now.'
Perhaps the most unexpected achievement of long-dead dinosaurs such as Polacanthus is the way they have inspired human amateurs to evolve into scholars. Mrs Spearpoint says: 'We're not after the money. We've found our very own dinosaur and we want to see the conservation through to its conclusion. A few months ago we didn't have a clue about dinosaur anatomy. Now, stupid though we may be, we are only a bit behind professional people. After all, we are specialists in Polacanthus.'
She and Mr Simpson are now racing against the tide in an attempt to recover Spike's club- like tail tip. Its shape may reveal Spike to have been female after all.
The Sixth London Convention of the Dinosaur Collectors Club takes place at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 on Sunday 20 November (11.30am-4.30pm), entry 60p, children 30p. Talk by Martin Simpson: 'Dinosaur Wars on the Isle of Wight' (1pm), entry pounds 1. Evening debate: 'Hot-blooded dinosaurs' (7.30pm), entry pounds 1.
(Photographs omitted)
Comments