Nearly 300 Tyrannosaurus rex bones, excavated from three different locations in the United States and assembled into a single skeleton, were sold at the Koller auction house in Zurich, Switzerland, on April 18 for $5.3 million. dollars, a price slightly below the expected price. informed Associated Press.
It is the first time that a skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex – a large dinosaur that lived between 65 and 67 million years ago – has been auctioned in Europe. Koller’s marketing manager, Karl Green, suggested that the final price was lower than expected due to the fact that the skeleton was made up of the remains of various tyrannosaurs. According to him, the expected price – in the range of 5.6 to 8.9 million dollars – would be “fair for a dinosaur”.
Greene also expressed his hope that the skeleton being sold “will be on public display somewhere.” At the same time, the Koller press service refused to share information about the skeleton’s buyer, saying only that it was a “private European collector”.
The description of the lot said its main value was the “remarkably preserved” skull of a tyrannosaurus rex.
“When dinosaurs died during the Jurassic or Cretaceous periods, they often lost their heads during fossil formation. In fact, most dinosaurs end up without a skull,” commented Nils Knetschke, Keller’s scientific consultant. , in the field.
He pointed out that the Tyrannosaurus rex skull for sale was assembled from “truly original bones” that belonged to the “same specimen”.
The skeleton of Tyrannosaurus Rex is made up of 293 bones, has a length of 11.6 meters and a height of 3.9 meters. For greater effect, the skull was fixed in a position corresponding to the gaping mouth, like a roaring dinosaur. The bones from which the skeleton was assembled were recovered from three sites at Hell Creek and Lance Creek in Montana and Wyoming between 2008 and 2013.
In the same areas, the skeletons of two other dinosaurs were found, which also fell under the hammer – “Sue”, which was sold more than 25 years ago for 8.4 million dollars, and “Stan” , bought three years ago for nearly $32 million. Two years ago, the skeleton of a triceratops, brought in the Guinness Book of Records as the tallest in the world and known as “Big John”, was sold to a private collector at an auction in Paris for 6.6 million euros (7, $2 million).
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