A composite skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex, a species that lived around 65 to 67 million years ago, was auctioned in Switzerland on Tuesday for almost 5.6 million euros.
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According to the auction house Koller, which carried out the sale, it was estimated at five to eight million Swiss francs.
The hammer price reached 4.8 million Swiss francs and the final price – including expenses – was 5.5 million Swiss francs (5.9 million euros), an auction house spokesman, Karl Green, told AFP.
The skeleton, dubbed Trinity, about 3.9 meters tall and 11.6 meters long, is actually an assemblage of bones from three different T-Rex found between 2008 and 2013 in formations in Montana and Wyoming in the Northwestern United States, according to the sales catalogue .
At these locations, two other important T-Rex skeletons had been discovered and then auctioned off: In 2020, Stan had sold for $31.8 million, beating Sue’s previous record set in 1997 for $8.4 million had been sold.
Trinity was owned by an American collector and was acquired by a European collector of dinosaurs and modern art, auctioneer Cyril Koller told AFP.
It is the “third T-Rex sold at auction” worldwide and the “first sold at auction in Europe,” he added.
The public was able to marvel at the skeleton in Zurich for more than two weeks. “More than 30,000 visitors came to admire Trinity, including many children,” said Mr. Koller.
A little over half of Trinity’s bone material comes from the three tyrannosaur specimens, which is more than the 50% experts need for such a skeleton to be considered of high quality.
The house of Koller wanted to be transparent about the origin of the bones. Hence the name Trinity.
Still, for paleontologist Thomas Holtz, Trinity is “not really a specimen, more like an art installation.” According to him, it is “misleading” and “inappropriate (…) to combine real bones from different individuals into a single skeleton”.
Last year, the auction house Christie’s had to withdraw another T-Rex skeleton, also from Montana, from sale in Hong Kong a few days ago because of doubts about the authenticity of parts of the fossil.
The sale of dinosaur skeletons regularly livens up auction nights, even if it frustrates paleontologists who see it as less of a chance to exhibit them in museums.