đối lập để quan tâm thu thập, chỉ cần đến bất hợp pháp thu thập hiện đang tăng "(Rolfe 1977). Đại lý thương mại đã phát triển về số lượng thông qua năm 1970 như lãi suất trong việc thu thập nghiệp dư đã tăng lên. Nhưng vào cuối thập kỷ này vẫn còn ước tính chỉ có bảy hay tám nhà sưu tập chuyên nghiệp ở Anh, | 336 SIMON J. KNELL opposed to keen collecting simply to the illicit collecting currently on the increase Rolfe 1977 . Commercial dealerships had grown in number through the 1970s as interest in amateur collecting had increased. But at the end of the decade there were still estimated to be only seven or eight professional collectors in Britain perhaps twelve importers or wholesalers and a small but diverse group of rockshop operators. There were also a considerable number of amateurs who were not averse to selling fossils Harker 1984 . Contrary to establishment views the commercial collecting community was not homogenous nor could it be easily defined. Similarly the amateur community was beyond simple definition in these terms. However the Lesmahagow incidents alerted the NCC to the risk of future site damage and in the most publicized case of the decade it oversaw the arrest of two German collectors at the famous Devonian fish locality of Achanarras Quarry near Thurso in the far north of the Scottish mainland in June 1979. In the first conviction of its kind in Britain these two collectors were merely admonished but it was felt at the time that an important warning had been given to others NCC 1980i . The position of the commercial collector took a new turn in 1981 when the University of Glasgow contracted Stan Wood a local amateur who had found Namurian Carboniferous fish in a stream-bed near the housing estate where he lived to oversee a fossil dig at the site. The excavation at Bearsden became one of the great British palaeontological stories of the decade revealing amongst other things remarkable new fossil sharks. Partly supported by the NCC the excavation also delivered fine educational outcomes for the Hunterian Museum. It demonstrated the potential of amateur and educational involvement in a strikingly novel way that seemed to run counter to many NCC preconceptions. A few years later Wood rediscovered the East Kirkton Limestone near Bathgate in West Lothian
