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‘A fair price for the dino’: T-rex skeleton sells for almost €5m at Zurich auction

Dinosaur skeleton, named Trinity, was assembled from bones from multiple dig sites and went under the hammer at Koller auction house

Cyril Koller, chief executive of auction house Koller, stands next to the head of the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex named Trinity, during an auction in Zurich, Switzerland on Tuesday. Photograph: Michael Buholzer/Keystone via AP/PA

Tue Apr 18 2023 - 18:10

Nearly 300 Tyrannosaurus rex bones that were dug up from three sites in the United States and assembled into a single skeleton have sold at an auction in Switzerland for €4.87 million.

Crafted into an open-mouth pose, the T-rex skeleton measuring 11.6m long and 3.9m high came in under the anticipated range of €5 million to €8 million when it went under the hammer at the Koller auction house in Zurich.

Koller had said Tuesday’s sale would be the first time such a T-rex skeleton would go up for auction in Europe. The composite skeleton was a showpiece of an auction that featured some 70 lots, and the skull was set up next to the auctioneer’s podium throughout.

“It could be that it was a composite — that could be why the purists didn’t go for it,” Karl Green, the auction house’s marketing director, said. “It’s a fair price for the dino. I hope it’s going to be shown somewhere in public.”

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The full skeleton on display. Photograph: AP

Mr Green did not identify the buyer, but said it was a “European private collector”. Including the “buyer’s premium” and fees, the sale came to €5.58 million, Koller said.

Promoters said the composite T-rex, dubbed Trinity, was built from specimens retrieved from three sites in the Hell Creek and Lance Creek formations of Montana and Wyoming between 2008 and 2013.

Koller said “original bone material” comprised more than half of the restored skeleton. The auction house said the skull was particularly rare and also remarkably well-preserved.

“When dinosaurs died in the Jurassic or Cretaceous periods, they often lost their heads during deposition [of the remains into rocks]. In fact, most dinosaurs are found without their skulls,” Nils Knoetschke, a scientific adviser who was quoted in the auction catalogue. “But here we have truly original Tyrannosaurus skull bones that all originate from the same specimen.”

T-rex roamed the Earth between 65 and 67 million years ago. A study published two years ago in the journal Science estimated that about 2.5 billion of the dinosaurs ever lived.

The two areas the bones for Trinity came from were also the source of other T rex skeletons that were auctioned off, according to Koller: Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History bought “Sue” for €7.6 million more than 25 years ago, and “Stan” sold for nearly €29 million three years ago.

Two years ago, a triceratops skeleton that Guinness World Records declared as the world’s biggest, known as “Big John,” was sold for €6.6 million to a private collector at a Paris auction. – AP

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