Children in Mexico spend up to seven hours a day in front of a screen. In light of this reality, the government has decided to completely restrict the use of cellphones in elementary and middle schools. President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has avoided calling the initiative a “ban,” says she wants to fight phone addiction among young people to “protect their development and creativity.” The country thus joins Brazil and Chile among regional states with stricter rules on cellphone use in classrooms and moves ahead of others, such as Argentina and Colombia, where regulation is still underway.

As of November 3, elementary and middle school classrooms and playgrounds in Mexico will be screen-free. Sheinbaum and Education Secretary Mario Delgado have spent weeks presenting data, backed by experts, that outline the problem: more than 83% of parents are worried about their children’s device time and more than 70% of household heads support regulating use. It is not only an adult perception: four in 10 Mexican students say their classmates are distracted by digital devices in most or all classes. In addition, a survey of over 565,000 teachers found that 81% support the measure. Delgado also highlighted the impact of social networks on children and adolescents, noting that U.S. courts have ruled that these platforms are designed to be addictive and cause harm to mental health.

The PISA 2025 report, in which Mexico slipped in mathematics, revealed that almost half of the time students spend on screens at school (2.7 hours) is for leisure. Devices have shortened the attention span readers use to comprehend a text. Following the government forums and the release of the results of the international study, Mexico has joined more than half of the world’s countries that already have restrictions on the use of devices in schools. Depending on the region, the measures range from banning cellphones during the school day to total restrictions on certain social media platforms.

In Latin America, Brazil removed cellphones from schools at the start of the last school year in January 2025. The Lula government decided to ban them both in classrooms and during recess, in public and private schools, to protect students’ mental and physical health and to improve academic performance. The debate was intense, but the overall assessment is positive. On the first anniversary of phone-free schools, eight in 10 Brazilian students reported “paying more attention” in class and 65% of teachers said incidents of online bullying had fallen, according to an evaluation of the law commissioned by the parliamentary education bloc. Even students unhappy with the new rule acknowledged the benefits. Lívia de Souza Xavier, 14, said she concentrates more and her grades have improved significantly, according to testimony collected by the NGO Alana, which focuses on children. Another student said she now talks more with classmates and, if she cannot find them, she goes to look for them, as reported by Naiara Galarraga Gortázar.

Chile has moved in the same direction since February, when Law 21.801 came into force, restricting the use of phones and any other internet-enabled device in preschool, elementary, and high school education. The prohibition, however, is not absolute: the law exempts pedagogical use, meaning cases in which a teaching activity requires a device. The legislation also allows other exceptions that must be justified by parents or guardians and generally require authorization from the school administration. These include special educational needs, emergencies or disasters, the student’s health conditions, and personal safety. So far, enforcement and monitoring of the regulation have been left to Chilean educational institutions. With reporting from Ana María Sanhueza.

In Argentina, regulation is advancing at the provincial level. Most provinces have passed laws banning cellphone use at all levels and allowing it only exceptionally, generally in high schools, and always for pedagogical purposes and at the express request of educational authorities. That group includes, among others, three of the country’s four most populous districts: the City of Buenos Aires and the provinces of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe. Other important jurisdictions, such as Córdoba and Tucumán, have left each school to set its own phone-use rules. Finally, provinces like Mendoza have authorized cellphone use “to improve the teaching-learning process” but have faced growing resistance within schools. With reporting from Javier Lorca.

The Lula government, which welcomed the PISA results optimistically, noted that 81% of Brazilian students examined attended schools that restrict cellphone use.

The debate has recently begun in Colombia, where the decision is left to each institution. The exception is Bogotá: on September 7 it launched the policy “(Re)connect to learn,” which requires public and private schools at all levels to implement a ban on cellphone use throughout the school day, including breaks, for both students and teachers. It only relaxes the restriction for health, inclusion, or emergency reasons, and allows pedagogical use from eighth grade. Schools now have six months to adjust their rules and define how the restriction will be applied, while the Health Secretariat will assess results after one year. Reported by Juan Esteban Lewin.

Mexico’s PISA 2025 results, even with phones present in schools, show indicators below the OECD average in all areas, although the country outperforms almost all the mentioned Latin American countries in mathematics. For example, it scores higher than Colombia, Brazil and Argentina, though it is surpassed by Chile, as in science and reading.

Mexico is thus undertaking the experiment of removing phones from schools to try to restore space for concentration, coexistence, and learning. From November 3, the country will be able to measure whether limiting screens also translates into better learning outcomes.

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“Look, with this I can solve the origin of vipers,” a European collector snapped at Argentine paleontologist Federico Agnolín a few years ago. Then he shut the drawer, consigning the fossil to darkness. “It was like a little blind viper, a creature that never saw the light of science. It’s a very complicated issue. I can’t say much more,” the scientist admits today.

This summer, The Guardian revealed that one of the most spectacular collections of Jurassic fossils in the United Kingdom had been sold to a museum in Abu Dhabi, a move British experts described as an irreparable loss for a country more used to seeing prized collections arrive on its shores than leave them. The 318 specimens assembled by a private fossil collector fetched “an eight-figure sum.”

Public fossil auctions, such as those regularly organized by Sotheby’s, are becoming increasingly common and lucrative. Prices have soared from the more than $8 million paid for Sue, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, in 1997 to the more than $50.1 million spent this year on Gus, another specimen of the species, in a bidding war that lasted barely 10 minutes. High-profile actors have bought dinosaurs of their own, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe and Nicolas Cage. Cage was forced to return a Tarbosaurus skull for which he had paid $276,000 after it emerged that it had been looted from Mongolia. The fossil craze can lead to dubious acquisitions, even when everything initially appears legal.

“A fossil is priceless because it is a unique item created by nature. Its value is exclusively scientific,” Agnolín argues. “There are collectors, people with a lot of money who don’t know what to do with it and devote themselves to collecting fossils. We cannot allow humanity to be deprived of knowledge simply because someone likes a piece and wants it on their windowsill. And that happens a lot.”

Agnolín has come across scenes like the one with the blind viper many times and is convinced that fossils have become the latest trophy for the wealthy. “Collectors seek out the unusual. I know that world very well. There’s the guy who has the Tyrannosaurus rex, who wants to show it off to his friends, and there’s the guy who has a new species — one not yet classified by science — who takes pleasure in knowing that only he can admire it, even though that specimen might solve an important scientific problem.”

That lies at the heart of the controversy. As multimillionaires pour money into fossils, scientists worry that the trend could hinder research.

Legal grey areas

In many places where the fossil trade is legal, owners are under no obligation to inform scientific institutions about specimens they acquire, even though it is their scientific value that makes them important in the first place. Without the technical knowledge attached to them, any fossil would be little more than a bone or an oddly shaped rock.

The fossil market is legal in the United States and in parts of Europe, although regulations vary considerably depending on the jurisdiction and the type of land where a specimen was found. In Spain and Latin America, by contrast, such transactions are generally prohibited, and fossil discoveries are considered part of the national heritage. With no international framework establishing even minimum rules for the trade, collectors can exploit legal grey areas while traffickers take advantage of the differences between national laws.

“Often those legal gray areas are used to carry out what is known as huaquerismo, which is the extraction of archaeological or paleontological remains to take them out of the country,” warns paleontologist Horacio Padula, deputy manager in the Buenos Aires City Heritage Directorate and one of the architects of Argentina’s 2003 reform of its Archaeological and Paleontological Heritage Protection Law. “I have seen it, as many people have; there used to be a market selling fossils at the door of the Natural Sciences Museum,” Padula recalls.

Selling an Argentine fossil abroad is illegal, but selling a U.S. one is not. “These countries — where the fossil trade is lawful — have a different policy. What the state cannot or does not want to protect becomes appropriable,” says María Luz Endere, a PhD in archaeology and researcher specializing in cultural heritage law and management. “That is where speculation comes in, because it’s a form of investment, like buying art. You can buy a dinosaur as an investment,” she compares.

“How do you legislate to decide that fossils can be bought, but only those irrelevant to science? How do you know which one won’t solve a scientific puzzle?” Agnolín asks. “Once we went to study material in Germany, which is the great repository for fossils from the rest of the world, and there was a feathered dinosaur from China that had a sternum like a chicken’s. It’s the bone that allows birds to open their wings to fly. It was the perfect transition between a dinosaur and a bird. It had been bought illegally,” he remembers, still outraged.

The long tradition of trading prehistory

In the English-speaking world, the buying and selling of prehistoric specimens is not only legal but an old tradition. The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show in Arizona has been running for more than 70 years and is the world’s most important event of its kind. Thousands of exhibitors offer minerals, gemstones and fossils.

Fossil trading has always been legal in the United Kingdom. It was in this context that pioneers such as Mary Anning emerged, making a living and earning fame by selling the fossils she discovered along the coast of Lyme Regis. Today, there are numerous fossil shops and preparation workshops, where specimens are meticulously cleaned and restored.

On sites such as Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, collectors follow a general code of conduct that distinguishes between two categories of fossils: those of high scientific importance and those of more limited significance. Only the former, including potentially new species, rare finds or exceptionally well-preserved specimens, must be formally reported and recorded.

But even Britain can no longer keep such treasures at home: the fossils that ended up in Abu Dhabi made that journey because no British museum could afford to buy them. Hundreds of marine creatures, including ichthyosaurs and species that may yet prove new to science, were shipped to another continent.

For paleontologist Sebastián Apesteguía, the growing appetite of the wealthy for fossils reflects the return of a kind of imperial inequality. “It’s like a return to the Roman world, when the power gap between the rich and the plebeians was so great that they could afford to own impossible objects.”

The Inca Empire did something similar, he argues. “When Túpac Yupanqui sailed to Polynesia, he brought whale remains to keep in the palace, a brass chair and very dark-skinned slaves. He brought them as trophies to display objects from other parts of the world,” says Apesteguía, who also studies the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

In Agnolín’s view, permissive legislation is perfect for plundering nations. “They’re tailor-made for them, because they need to allow the entry of fossils from other countries,” he argues.

What underlies the trend, the Argentine scientist believes, is a troubling idea: that money can buy anything and satisfy every whim. “Increasingly, real-world villains resemble those from comic books, who think they can achieve eternal life,” he says. “This madness happening with fossils is part of that — it’s the work of villains who seem straight out of Batman. States should put a stop to it. This is about understanding the history of life on Earth, and that belongs to humanity.”

The price of history

• Gus, the T. rex. Sold in July of this year by auction house Sotheby’s in New York for $50.1 million in 10 minutes. It is one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons.
• Ceratosaurus nasicornis. Sold in 2025 for $30.5 million by Sotheby’s. It is 150 million years old. Only four exist in the world. The one sold is the only juvenile specimen. It belonged to the Museum of Ancient Life in Utah, United States. The anonymous buyer promised to loan it to another institution for continued display, but its whereabouts remain undisclosed. A meteorite was also sold at the same auction.
• Apex, the stegosaurus. Sold in 2024 for $44.6 million to financier Ken Griffin. The magnate loaned it to the American Museum of Natural History, where it can be seen through 2028. It was discovered in 2022, and there are 80 specimens worldwide. Apex is one of the most complete skeletons. Griffin pledged to fund research that could yield more details about its species, growth, metabolism and skeletal development.
• Stan, the T. rex. Sold in 2020 for $31,847,500 to an anonymous buyer in a virtual auction alongside works of art in the U.S. It was missing for two years until the Abu Dhabi Natural History Museum, which opened in late 2025, announced it would be exhibited there. The 67‑million‑year‑old specimen was discovered in 1987 in South Dakota’s Hell Creek Formation and is one of the most complete T. rex skeletons ever found. It is, to date, the most expensive fossil in history.
• Allosaurus and Diplodocus skeletons. Sold in 2018 by Binoche et Giquello in Paris for €1.15 million ($1.33 million) and €1.18 million ($1.36 million), respectively.
• Triceratops skull, sold in 2017 (also in Paris) for €177,800 ($205,000) to a Chinese multimillionaire who owns a hotel chain.
• Allosaurus and a Siberian mammoth. Sold in 2016 and 2017 by auction house Aguttes for more than €1.1 million ($1.27 million) and €548,000 ($632,000), respectively.
• Tarbosaurus skull. The 67‑million‑year‑old fossil, from a close relative of T. rex, was purchased by Nicolas Cage in 2007 for $276,000. He was later forced to return it after investigators determined it had been illegally smuggled out of Mongolia, highlighting the risks and legal ambiguities that can accompany the booming fossil trade.
• Sue, the T. rex. Sold in 1997 for $8.3 million to the Field Museum in Chicago.

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