T. Rex skeleton to be auctioned in Las Vegas & expected to fetch $6 million
Museums and high-rolling natural history buffs will get a crack at buying a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex next month at a Las Vegas Strip auction. Experts say the 170 bones discovered about 17 years ago in South Dakota represent more than half the skeleton of a 40-foot-long, 7.5 ton dinosaur that lived 66 million years ago.
Auctioneer Bonhams & Butterfields is hoping that bids for the T. rex dubbed “Samson” will top $6 million when it is sold Oct. 3 at the Venetian hotel-casino in Las Vegas. Tom Lindgren, a natural history specialist for Bonhams & Butterfields, said “Samson” is the third most complete T. rex skeleton ever discovered, and one of only 42 specimens discovered in the last 100 years with more than 10 percent of the bones. “This represents the pinnacle of paleontology,” Lindgren told The Associated Press on Friday. “Most of the major museums in the world have casts of T. rexes,” as opposed to the real thing, he said. “Bidding on this T. rex is not going to be a gamble, it’s going to be the opportunity of a lifetime to whoever gets it.”
Lindgren said private bidders are welcome, but he and its owners want to see “Samson” end up at a museum or scientific institution, studied further and put on public display. The T. rex is being sold along with 41 other lots of museum-ready pieces, including a 28-foot duck-billed dinosaur skeleton and a 7-foot fossil shark. The collection will be on public preview for two weeks before the auction. Along with the T. rex skeleton’s mounted bones, hundreds of bone fragments in plastic bags and bins could help scientists piece together more of “Samson” — if they are willing to invest potentially thousands of hours. “If a museum buys this, they can afford to sit there and over a period of time, put the pieces together,” Lindgren said. “It could take years to put the rest of the bone fragments together.”
Source
Comments