The richest countries in the world have come close to monopolizing the production of knowledge about the past of life on Earth over the past 30 years: 97% of the data published on fossils in the world during that period were participated by scientists from those nations.
The conclusion is part of an analysis that dissects the role of colonialism and global inequalities in paleontology, a branch of science that studies extinct living beings.
The study, which has just come out in the scientific journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, also shows that most developing countries, including Brazil, have been the target of the so-called “parachute science” in this area.
In other words, researchers from developed nations often find a way to use fossils from poorer countries in their studies without any collaboration with scientists in the places where the paleontological treasures were found.
The survey on the subject has as its first author a scientist from Mauritius, Nussaïbah Raja, who now works at the Friedrich-Alexander University, in Germany. The study is also signed by Brazilian paleontologist Aline Ghilardi, from the Department of Geology at UFRN (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte).
The UFRN researcher says that she was contacted by Raja and her colleague Emma Dunne, from the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom), because they started to follow the mobilization of Brazilian paleontologists in favor of the repatriation of the dinosaur from Ceará. Ubirajara jubatus.
The 110-million-year-old fossil ended up in a German museum by almost certainly illegal means (since Brazilian law considers all fossils to be Union goods) and ended up being named by an entirely foreign team, in a classic case of “parachute science “.
The campaign of Brazilian scientists about the stolen fossil managed to have the study on the species retracted (roughly, “unpublished”, ceasing to be valid for the scientific community). It still remains to get the German authorities to return the dinosaur to Brazil.
“Nussaïbah and Emma were interested in finding out more about the case and also wanted details of my perception of colonialism in science. We set up a meeting and talked a lot. We realized that we had several interests and ideas in common,” Ghilardi told leaf. “They said that they were gathering data for this work and that they would need help to analyze all of this, especially from the perspective of other countries and regions of the world.”
The result of the collaboration makes it clear that the problem has multiple layers. On the one hand, the legacy of European and North American colonialism and imperialism from the Age of Discovery, and especially from the 19th century onwards, makes certain countries “lot” among themselves their former colonies and areas of influence.
In Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, for example, which were dominated by France until the years after World War II, to date a quarter of all paleontological research is carried out by the French.
The current Tanzania was part of the so-called German East Africa for a short time, from 1886 to 1919, but even so German paleontologists are still responsible for 17% of the studies carried out in the region in recent decades.
Other countries, with particularly rich fossil deposits and problematic regulatory systems, could become targets of widespread “scientific tourism” or the black market for fossils.
This is the case of Myanmar, in Southeast Asia, and the Dominican Republic, in the Caribbean, because of their sources of amber, a material that usually preserves invertebrates that are tens of millions of years old.
In these cases, there are scientists who simply buy amber fragments on the internet and describe species without researchers from the country of origin of the fossils even knowing of their existence.
If the scenario is bleak in many cases, other developing countries have been successful in tackling the problem and creating a more equitable knowledge production in the area.
“We can highlight China and Argentina. Despite not having managed to completely curb this type of practice, they have greatly increased the domestic production of works in paleontology, have developed more equitable international collaborations and this has reduced parachute attacks. Mongolia is working hard on that, but it didn’t feature prominently in our data,” analyzes Ghilardi.
“Brazil has also improved the production of domestic paleontology in recent decades, new research centers have sprung up in more regions during the time of university expansion, but this has not managed to curb parachuting science in some specific areas, such as the chapada do Araripe [no sertão do Ceará e regiões vizinhas].”
The work also brings recommendations to minimize regional inequalities in the area, such as more attention by foreign researchers to local legislation and investment so that fossils found in a country can stay there, benefiting the scientific community and the population of the place of origin.
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