Fossil Wars/Fossil Clues

Dinosaur Fossil Wars surprised me because I never knew about the legal battles that took place over dinosaur fossils and that there was so much competition among scientists, amateurs, and poachers, further complicated by private collectors and the federal government. Much collection is illegal because of the large demand and complicated, oblique laws and regulations, requiring permits on any public land. It seems pretty limiting that fossils are government property, but cases are deemed criminal based on intent, which would be difficult to prove. And it sounds like the more valuable the specimen, and the more money that's involved, the more the government is likely to intervene, like in Frithiof's case which wasn't a secret excavation (appearing on the Discovery channel and in the news, it was obvious that he didn't know it was public property and he wasn't a poacher. I wasn't sure how to judge the idea of amateurs taking valuable specimens away from scientific knowledge, but it would be ideal to maintain a balance where private collectors could obtain common fossils and scientists could study the most significant ones that offered new clues. I do believe nothing can stop illegal collecting, especially on a small scale, I've found fossils many times and never heard about such laws.

Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins related to our discussions of the evolution of theories and scientific facts, but in this case many solid clues are missing, and unlike the horse lineage, we don't know whether our origins were linear or more complex. Connecting the dots to our human origins with a large million year gap in fossil records seems like a major issue in our relatively short lineage. I was surprised to find out that only traces of our Homo ancestors from over 2 million years ago are loose teeth and fragments, and yet there is enough evidence that scientists believe our first ancestors arose 3 million years ago. Why have there been so few findings, or why have they been "poorly preserved" for this interval of time? There are suggestions that some members left Africa and evolved rapidly due to isolaton, returning later to Africa, so should they be looking elsewhere?