Curators squeezed out by high dino bones price tag
'Big John' was discovered in South Dakota in 2014
Christophe ARCHAMBAULT AFP/File
Issued on: 21/10/2021
Paris (AFP)
With an estimated price tag of up to 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million), Duranthon, who directs the Toulouse Museum of Natural History, told AFP the skeleton would cost 20 to 25 years of his acquisitions budget.
"We can't compete," he said.
The triceratops is among the most distinctive of dinosaurs due to the three horns on its head -- one at the nose and two on the forehead -- that give the dinosaur its Latin name.
"Big John" is the largest known surviving example, 66 million years old and with a skeleton some eight metres long.
It was discovered in South Dakota in 2014 and flown to Italy where it was assembled by specialists.
It is only the latest dinosaur to be sold by the Drouot auction house which, according to its website, handled an allosaurus and a diplodocus each worth 1.4 million euros in 2018.
Last year, they sold a second allosaurus for three million.
Issued on: 21/10/2021
Paris (AFP)
With an estimated price tag of up to 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million), Duranthon, who directs the Toulouse Museum of Natural History, told AFP the skeleton would cost 20 to 25 years of his acquisitions budget.
"We can't compete," he said.
The triceratops is among the most distinctive of dinosaurs due to the three horns on its head -- one at the nose and two on the forehead -- that give the dinosaur its Latin name.
"Big John" is the largest known surviving example, 66 million years old and with a skeleton some eight metres long.
It was discovered in South Dakota in 2014 and flown to Italy where it was assembled by specialists.
It is only the latest dinosaur to be sold by the Drouot auction house which, according to its website, handled an allosaurus and a diplodocus each worth 1.4 million euros in 2018.
Last year, they sold a second allosaurus for three million.
The Drouot auction house has sold several dinosaur skeletons over the past few years Christophe ARCHAMBAULT AFP/File
That these and other skeletons could adorn the private mansions of the ultra-wealthy rather than museum halls is a common source of frustration.
For Steve Brusatte, a consultant on the forthcoming "Jurassic World" movie, "dinosaur fossils belong in museums".
The author of "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs" remembers being a teenager and seeing the fossil that would inspire him to go into palaeontology.
"The T. rex skeleton Sue was put on display at the Field Museum in Chicago," Brusatte told AFP.
"It awed me and, standing under it, it gave me a new perspective on the ancient world."
Lost to history?
If very rare artefacts go directly into private collections, there could be a loss for the scientific community, said Annelise Folie, curator of palaeontology collections at Belgium's Royal Institute of Natural Sciences.
"If it's a new species... we may never even be aware that it existed on Earth," she told AFP.
It is also impossible to say without investigation "whether a skeleton contains new information or not," said palaeontologist Nour-Eddine Jalil, of Paris' Museum of Natural History.
Although, the lure of selling fossils could motivate new archaeological expeditions.
In the case of Big John, the sale is "not a big deal because we already have plenty of triceratops," palaeontologist Pascal Godefroit of the Belgian Royal Institute of Natural Sciences told AFP.
Scientists had also been able to analyse the bones before the auction.
That these and other skeletons could adorn the private mansions of the ultra-wealthy rather than museum halls is a common source of frustration.
For Steve Brusatte, a consultant on the forthcoming "Jurassic World" movie, "dinosaur fossils belong in museums".
The author of "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs" remembers being a teenager and seeing the fossil that would inspire him to go into palaeontology.
"The T. rex skeleton Sue was put on display at the Field Museum in Chicago," Brusatte told AFP.
"It awed me and, standing under it, it gave me a new perspective on the ancient world."
Lost to history?
If very rare artefacts go directly into private collections, there could be a loss for the scientific community, said Annelise Folie, curator of palaeontology collections at Belgium's Royal Institute of Natural Sciences.
"If it's a new species... we may never even be aware that it existed on Earth," she told AFP.
It is also impossible to say without investigation "whether a skeleton contains new information or not," said palaeontologist Nour-Eddine Jalil, of Paris' Museum of Natural History.
Although, the lure of selling fossils could motivate new archaeological expeditions.
In the case of Big John, the sale is "not a big deal because we already have plenty of triceratops," palaeontologist Pascal Godefroit of the Belgian Royal Institute of Natural Sciences told AFP.
Scientists had also been able to analyse the bones before the auction.
Sue was discovered by fossil hunter Sue Hendrickson in 1990 and purchased by the Field Museum in Chicago at public auction in 1997
TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA AFP/File
He said that while scientists can't force buyers to let them analyse specimens, the two sides are sometimes able to "work together intelligently".
But he said there are problems with many of the specimens put up for sale.
"It happens too often that you have interesting pieces but they're poorly identified," he said.
"Or have been made useless by efforts to make them more complete like filling them in with plastic."
Back in 1997, Sue the T. rex that sparked the imagination of the young Brusatte was also put up for auction.
Chicago's Field Museum was able to raise over $8 million to purchase it.
"But it could easily have gone the other way," said Brusatte.
"A single wealthy person could have bought it, brought it home and it would never have been put on display for the public, to inspire me and countless other children."
The 67-million-year-old "Sue" was discovered in 1990 on an Indian reservation in South Dakota by American palaeontologist Sue Hendrickson and was named after its finder.
The sale of "Big John" comes amid continued enthusiasm for dinosaur skeletons, with a 67-million-year-old T. rex skeleton smashing records when it was sold in New York for $31.8 million just over a year ago.
The triceratops has an export licence, and Alexandre Giquello of the Giquello auction house said in September that there were a dozen possible buyers.
Dinosaur sales can be unpredictable however: in 2020, several specimens offered in Paris did not find takers after minimum prices were not reached.
© 2021 AFP
He said that while scientists can't force buyers to let them analyse specimens, the two sides are sometimes able to "work together intelligently".
But he said there are problems with many of the specimens put up for sale.
"It happens too often that you have interesting pieces but they're poorly identified," he said.
"Or have been made useless by efforts to make them more complete like filling them in with plastic."
Back in 1997, Sue the T. rex that sparked the imagination of the young Brusatte was also put up for auction.
Chicago's Field Museum was able to raise over $8 million to purchase it.
"But it could easily have gone the other way," said Brusatte.
"A single wealthy person could have bought it, brought it home and it would never have been put on display for the public, to inspire me and countless other children."
The 67-million-year-old "Sue" was discovered in 1990 on an Indian reservation in South Dakota by American palaeontologist Sue Hendrickson and was named after its finder.
The sale of "Big John" comes amid continued enthusiasm for dinosaur skeletons, with a 67-million-year-old T. rex skeleton smashing records when it was sold in New York for $31.8 million just over a year ago.
The triceratops has an export licence, and Alexandre Giquello of the Giquello auction house said in September that there were a dozen possible buyers.
Dinosaur sales can be unpredictable however: in 2020, several specimens offered in Paris did not find takers after minimum prices were not reached.
© 2021 AFP
'Big John,' world's largest triceratops, sells for $7.7M
By Daniel Uria & Clyde Hughes
The largest triceratops skeleton ever found, known as "Big John," will be sold Thursday at auction house Hotel Drouot in Paris. It measures 26 feet long and is 60% complete. Photo courtesy of Hotel Drouot
Oct. 21 (UPI) -- "Big John," the world's largest Triceratops fossil ever found, sold for $7.7 million Thursday at the Hotel Drouot auction house in Paris, setting a new European record.
The 66-million-year-old skeleton was first discovered in South Dakota by geologist Walter W. Stein Bill in 2014.
The name of the buyer, believed to be a U.S. collector, was not revealed.
The skeleton, which is about 60% complete, measures 26 feet long and had been expected to sell for between $1.4 million and $1.8 million, according to the Hotel Drouot.
Big John's skull alone, which is 75% complete, measures 6.6 feet wide, and his two largest horns each are nearly 4 feet long and 1 foot wide at the base.
The auction house says that a laceration on Big John's collarbone is evidence of a fight with a smaller triceratops.
"These violent combats took place during the lifetime of these animals, probably for reasons of territorial defense or courtship of a mate," Hotel Drouot said in a statement.
The triceratopses, which means "three-horned face," were herbivorous chasmosaurine ceratopsid dinosaurs that emerged during the late Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous period, close to 70 million years ago in what's now North America.
A triceratops skeleton is seen at Christie's in Paris. A different skeleton going up for auction on Thursday is about 60% complete, measures 26 feet long and is expected to sell for as much as nearly $2 million. File Photo by Eco Clement/UPI
"Big John lived in Laramidia, an island continent stretching from present-day Alaska to Mexico. He died in an ancient flood plain -- the current Hell Creek geological formation [in South Dakota] -- allowing the conservation of his skeleton in mud, a sediment devoid of any biological activity."
In 2020, the bones were reassembled at the Zoic workshop in Italy under the supervision of paleontologist Iacopo Briano, who said the skeleton was 5% to 10% larger than that of any other triceratops previously discovered.
"It's a masterpiece," Briano said, according to The Guardian. "There are quite a few triceratops skulls around the world, but very few of them [are] almost complete."
A year ago, a 67 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton sold at auction for a record-breaking $31.8 million to become the most expensive fossil of all time.
Auctioneer Alexandre Giquello said Big John's immense skeleton would likely only pique the interest of about a dozen collectors throughout the world.
"There are ... people who are passionate about science and paleontology," Giquello said, according to The Guardian. "They are often quite young, coming from new technologies; they are in fact the Jurassic Park generation: they have seen the movies and have been immersed in this Hollywood mythology."
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