A spokesman for the auction house said the skeleton had been consigned by the same people who unearthed it. The agency said the skull had been stolen from the Gobi Desert.Īll known skeletons of Gorgosauruses are housed in institutional collections, making this the first one available for private ownership, Sotheby’s said in a statement. Several years ago, the actor Nicolas Cage returned the skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar to Mongolia, which he had acquired at an auction, after being contacted by the Department of Homeland Security. The remains of a Deinonychus antirrhopus, which inspired the Velociraptor in “Jurassic Park,” sold in May for $12.4 million. rex skeleton nicknamed Stan sold in October 2020 for nearly $32 million with fees after a 20-minute bidding war. Several dinosaur skeletons have sold in recent years at private auctions. Carr added: “The value of dinosaurs isn’t the price someone will pay. Gorgosauruses are even scarcer, he said, so each fossil not in a public trust is a blow to better understanding the animals.ĭr. rex specimens - ranging from an entire skeleton to a single tooth - in public trusts like museums and universities that he can access for his research, while there are about the same number that he cannot use because they are in private hands. rex as an example of the scarcity of dinosaur fossils. If the Gorgosaurus had been found just north of the border, in Alberta, it would have belonged to the public, paleontologists said.ĭr. In the United States, fossils found on private land can be sold for profit. But they acknowledge that everything about the sale appears legal. “But few have the capacity to inspire wonder and capture imaginations like this unbelievable Gorgosaurus skeleton.”
“In my career, I have had the privilege of handling and selling many exceptional and unique objects,” Cassandra Hatton, a senior vice president for Sotheby’s, said in a statement before the auction. The high bidder also won the right to name the dinosaur’s skeleton.
The auction house, which did not disclose the name of the seller or the buyer, had estimated it would sell for between $5 million and $8 million. The nine-foot-tall, 22-foot-long skeleton sold on Thursday was found in 2018 in the Judith River Formation, a fossil-rich area in Montana about 45 miles from the Canadian border. rex into a more-efficient and powerful killing machine.
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rex, said Lawrence Witmer, a paleontologist at Ohio University who was once a contributor to the TV show “Jurassic Fight Club.” Ten million years of evolution honed the T. As formidable as the Gorgosaurus was - its name means “fierce” or “terrifying” lizard - it would have been no match in a hypothetical fight with the T.
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