Vertebrate fossils on federal land

Under the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act, vertebrate fossils on land managed by the BLM, the Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Fish & Wildlife Service may be collected only under a permit issued to a qualified researcher affiliated with an approved repository. The fossils remain federal property and go to that repository. There is no casual-collecting exception for vertebrates, however small the tooth.

Excavating, removing, damaging or trafficking in paleontological resources from federal land is a criminal offence with penalties scaled to the value of the resource and the cost of restoration; a second offence doubles them. Civil penalties and forfeiture of the material and the equipment used apply separately. The United States has recovered and repatriated privately sold specimens years after the fact.

Federal land is not always marked. Checkerboard ownership across the western states means a ranch may have BLM sections inside it. The onus is on the collector to know; an ownership map from the BLM or the county assessor, or the OnX-style land apps, is a reasonable step and the locality record should note what you checked.

For collectors the practical rules are: vertebrate material is legal to own and sell only when it was collected on private land with permission or imported legally; record the land status on every specimen; and treat a vertebrate fossil with no provenance as one you cannot sell.

Tribal land is governed by the tribe and by federal law; assume no collecting without the tribe's written permission.