The ugly truth behind Oculudentavis

The beautiful tiny fossil skull of Oculudentavis khaungraae in its amber tomb and reconstructed state, as figured by Xing et al. (2020). Behind this beauty, however, lies an ugly, seemingly under-known truth about where these amazing amber specimens come from.

Yesterday, the description of an exciting new fossil bird was published in the world's leading scientific journal, Nature. The discovery concerns the complete but tiny skull and lower jaw of an archaic bird trapped in amber, called Oculudentavis khaungraae by the describers. News of this fossil has rippled around the world, and understandably so. It is, after all, among the smallest dinosaurs of all time with a skull length comparable to diminutive modern hummingbirds, and it gives us a lot to think about as goes avian evolution and the composition of Mesozoic ecosystems. Scientifically speaking, it's undoubtedly an amazing discovery. Social media is awash with discussion about the details of the paper, and palaeoartists are already sketching and painting speculative takes on this new smallest Mesozoic dinosaur

But while Oculudentavis is small, it can't hide an enormous elephant in the room: where it came from. Oculudentavis is one of many spectacular specimens to be described in recent years from the Early Cretaceous amber mines of Myanmar. The amber from this site, for whatever reason, is especially rich in all sorts of biological inclusions: bits of plant, whole insects, spiders, lizards, and even parts of dinosaurs. It's undeniably a fossil locality of tremendous global importance that promises to tell us much about Mesozoic life. It's also, however, a humanitarian nightmare which poses a significant ethical dilemma to anyone working on the biota from this site. These conditions have been the subject of numerous news articles in the last year (see New Scientist, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Science) and yet many of us - journalists included - are only talking about the cool science of Oculudentavis and other Myanmar amber specimens, and not the far more important ethical complications they are associated with.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves: what, exactly, are these issues? To get the best idea, please read the articles linked to above, but I will attempt a short summary here. The Myanmar amber mines are a series of hazardous, narrow tunnels dug by thousands of people under duress - one hesitates to use the word 'slave', but the comparison has been brought up in some reports. The richest amber horizons are about 100 m below the surface, so the tunnels to reach them are long and treacherous. Much of the mining is performed by teenagers because younger people tend to be thin, and the mines are so narrow that only slender people can navigate them. Hundreds of miners are injured or killed each month by tunnel collapses and flooding, and there is no compensation or healthcare for injury or death for the workers or their families. If that's not dangerous enough, the mines are situated in a zone of conflict between Kachin separatists and the Burmese army, so the surrounding area is littered with landmines. Much of the conflict in these areas - which has lasted now for several generations - stems from rival political factions fighting over the amber and other natural resources. Thousands of people have died in the fighting since the resumption of hostilities in 2011, and the conflict is associated with displacement of civilians, genocide, child soldiers, systematic rape and torture. Burmese amber stems from a region of harrowing, terrifying violence.

For a little over two years, this conflict has seen the deepest amber mines closed as the Burmese military occupies important mining sites, but with 10 tonnes of amber being recovered each year for the last few decades, there is no shortage of new and stockpiled specimens to sell. Most of the amber goes to markets in southern China, where it's converted into jewellery to contribute to a $1 billion dollar Chinese amber industry. But a minority - those with interesting inclusions - are sold to scientists. These transactions are not illegal in China, but their initial transference from Burma to China often is - they are frequently smuggled over the border. In at least some instances, these transactions are not carried out through officious museum administration departments, but rather in hotel rooms at palaeontological conferences. Katherine Gammon's Atlantic article describes scientists leaving these rooms with bagfuls of specimens for study having paid serious money for their wares. A well-preserved and unusual invertebrate inclusion will retail at over ten thousand dollars, and you could buy a luxury car for the cost of a Myanmar vertebrate. These fees are paid despite the provenance of the fossils often being unclear. It's thought that the Burmese mines could represent several millions of years of deposition but the amber horizons are not logged in detail, creating ambiguity about how old the specimens are and their ages relative to one another. What's clearer is that the money from these sales funds the various factions fighting over Burmese resources, which in turn spurs the Myanmar government to retaliate and violently suppress this insurgency. Make no mistake: Myanmar amber is big business and, from discovery to sale, they are conflict resources - the palaeontological equivalent of blood diamonds.

A lot of these details have only come to light in the last 12 months, and the palaeontological community is still working out how to process the news. It goes without saying that, even within the narrow scope of academia, the Myanmar specimens create a slew of ethical questions. Is it OK to buy and work on this material? Should museums feel comfortable archiving it? Should journals accept papers describing it? Should referees feel comfortable reviewing those papers? These are questions for academic palaeontology to address - hopefully with a sense of urgency - in due course. In the meantime, several palaeontologists are already refusing to associate with Myanmar amber in any way. This includes individuals who were previously working on Myanmar specimens. They won't research it, won't review papers on it, and won't comment on it to the press, other than to highlight the ethical issues behind it. Some are even calling for a total boycott of research on these specimens, with the hope that it will cut off a source of revenue for the ongoing Kachin conflict.

Other palaeontologists, however, are producing a huge amount of research, maybe even building careers, on Myanmar specimens. It's reported that that dozens of papers on Burmese amber are published every month, equating to hundreds a year. And do not think that this work is produced in ignorance: a lot of the details of the mining conditions of Burmese amber come from the same palaeontologists who publish on the specimens. Against the obvious question of whether this constitutes sound ethical practise, one of the authors behind Oculudentavis is quoted as saying "are we really going to turn our backs on this priceless scientific data?" in the New York Times. At time of writing, professional palaeontological and geological associations do not have official stances or guidelines on this issue.

It's against this backdrop that I've found it increasingly hard to stomach the growing hype around Oculudentavis. Seeing a new discovery being shared, discussed and restored is ordinarily fun, but, in this case, it seems criminal that this is occurring without wider recognition for the very real and great human cost these fossils are associated with. I appreciate that a lot of our joyful reaction to Oculudentavis stems from naivety about the history of the Myanmar amber - it's not like the conditions of the mines and their relevance to the Kachin conflict is mainstream news - but it's such a big part of what these fossils are about that we're almost being lied when authorities neglect to mention it. The story of a tiny Mesozoic bird isn't cute or fun when you know people have been dying in their hundreds in the place where it was found.

I figure the best thing we can do is make sure the context of Myanmar fossils is shared as widely as possible, so people can make their own judgement about the ethics and morals of sharing and promoting this story. For me, I can't celebrate Oculudentavis as a scientific achievement. For all its beauty and untapped knowledge, I just can't look at Myanmar amber with a normal sense of intrigue and wonder, because I can't stop thinking about how many kids might have died in a mine to obtain them, or how many guns were bought from their sale. These are not fun new fossil discoveries, but harrowing artefacts of a national crisis.

There is nothing we can now do to remove Oculudentavis or other published Myanmar specimens from our collective knowledge: they're out there, archived in scientific literature, and we have to engage and work with them in the way we do all fossils. But please, if you're going to write about or share the news of these discoveries, or are producing restorations of them, please treat them with due gravitas. The excitement of a new fossil discovery can be intoxicating, especially when they're as intriguing as the excellently preserved Myanmar material, but we should not forget that these specimens come at the direct expense of hundreds of poorly treated people, and contribute to the suffering of thousands more. Behind these beautiful and fascinating fossils is an ugly truth, and presenting them without due context omits important information that challenges how we conduct our science, and trivialises a very real crisis being faced by our fellow humans in a forgotten part of the planet.

Reference

• Xing, L., O’Connor, J.K., Schmitz, L. et al. (2020). Hummingbird-sized dinosaur from the Cretaceous period of Myanmar. Nature 579, 245–249.