![]() But nowadays these fossils are on display in shiny gallery spaces and are being appraised and marketed as rare objets d’art. ![]() ![]() The bones might once have been bought and sold at dusty “cowboy fossil” dealerships. rex fossils are increasingly being treated more like rare works of art than bits of scientific evidence, Yates says. One reason for the sky-high prices may be that T. At those prices, the public institutions that might try to claim these glimpses into the deep past are unable to compete with deep-pocketed private buyers, researchers say. rex fossils now fetch at auction can mean a big loss for science. The fossil was originally appraised at about $6 million - still a very large sum, though nothing like the final tally, which was the result of a three-way bidding war.īut the staggering amounts of money T. Stan’s final price “was completely unexpected,” Yates says. “These are astronomical sums of money, really surprising sums of money,” says Donna Yates, a criminologist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who studies high-value collectibles. Marcus Müller-Witte, M.A./Courtesy of Christie’s That auction was withdrawn due to questions over the number of replica bones in the fossil. rex fossil ever sold at auction in Asia, with an expected price of $15 million to $25 million. Shen (pictured) was slated to be the first T. However, the auction house pulled it over concerns about the number of replica bones used in the fossil. ![]() rex fossil named Shen was anticipated to sell for between $15 million and $25 million at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong in late November. It’s expected to sell for about $15 million.Īnother T. rex skull, will be the centerpiece of a Sotheby’s auction in New York City. rex’s value is sky-high, and the dinosaur continues to have its teeth firmly sunk into the auction world in 2022. That kind of publicity - and cachet - means that T. rex held the top spot it went for $8.3 million in 1997. rex smashed records in October 2020 when a bidding war drove its price to $31.8 million, the highest ever paid for any fossil. A nearly complete skeleton known as Stan the T. That outcome is still on the table, of course, but it might be a while before we find out Maximus’s fate.Tyrannosaurus rex isn’t just a king to paleontologists - the dinosaur increasingly reigns over the world of art auctions. “We always hope that it will be bought by an institution or an individual who will donate to one.” “This is something that I would want to study in my research if I could,” the paleontologist James G. Maximus, for example, seems to be a scientifically important specimen, but because the buyer has remained anonymous, nobody knows yet where he will end up. These academics contend that if wealthy individuals with money to spare can simply buy fossils, the skeletons may be kept from research and further study. “It’s all based on confidence,” he said after Friday’s sale, “and right now, there’s very low confidence in that arena.”ĭinosaur auctions have also been a sore spot for paleontologists. The art adviser Todd Levin told the Times that the outcome of the Christie’s sale may have impacted buyers’ certainty. ![]() Questions had come up about how much real bone was included in the skeleton, an issue that may have hurt the Maximus auction as well. Just a couple of weeks ago, Christie’s canceled an auction of a larger T.Rex expected to hammer down for up to $25 million. The sale was surrounded by a bit of controversy, perhaps contributing to its lower-than-expected profits. “And we are pleased to have set a significant new benchmark for dinosaur fossils at auction.” “Today’s sale was always designed to gauge the market,” said Cassandra Hatton, the global head of science and popular culture at Sotheby’s and the organizer of the auction. The ‘Billions’ Season 7 Trailer Brings Back Bobby Axelrod: ‘I’m Wide Awake’Įverything We Know About ‘Billions’ Season 7 So Far Lionel Messi Makes His Acting Debut in the Argentine TV Series ‘Los Protectores’ ![]()
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