14 DAY TRIAL // Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils are not exactly easy to come by, and nearly complete skeletons are even more uncommon. Only a few of these exist, but most of them miss a large number of bones. That is precisely why the collector community has saluted a recent decision, to put one of the largest and most complete T. Rex skeletons up for auction, this October, in Las Vegas. Samson, as the dinosaur came to be known by experts, was discovered some 22 years ago in South Dakota.
Unlike previously auctioned fossils, Samson will not be shipped to its buyer in the standard crates. Rather, it is already assembled, and ready to be delivered and exposed. Auction specialists say that dinosaur fossils are always a safe bet. That is to say, the latest auction, which also featured one of the most complete set of bones available, named Sue, brought in $8 million, in spite of the fact that the sellers were only expecting $1 to $2 million. Sue was bought by the Chicago Field Museum.
“In the last 110 years, there’s been a total of 46 specimens found of Tyrannosaurus rex of which this [Samson] is the third most complete and has the finest skull,” the Co-Director of natural history at the auction house Bonhams & Butterfields, Tom Lindgren, explains, quoted by Wired. The fossils to be put up for auction are 66 million years old, and feature about 170 bones, more than half the estimated total that T. Rex must have had when it lived. The mounted skeleton is 15 feet (about five meters) tall, and about 40 feet (13 meters) long.
“I’m going to estimate it’s in the neighborhood of 2 to 8 million, but it could easily go for upwards of $10 million. I want to hold the record for a natural history auction,” Lindgren says of the upcoming auction, which will be held at the Venetian casino on October 3rd. He already spoke to a number of museums, urging them to show interest in the exhibition and auction, which contain 50 other extremely rare items, including the longest shark fossil ever found (25 feet), and a woolly mammoth.
However, private investors are still the best bet, the expert explains. “There’s always the elite that have a lot of money and like unique and unusual items, especially the Hollywood types. There are a couple of major actors that are collectors of dinosauria,” Lindgren concludes.