Going, going, gone..: New highs at auction cast dark shadows on dinosaur fossils

Should one be able to simply… buy a dinosaur?

When Apex, one of the world’s most complete Stegosaurus skeletons, came up for auction at a Sotheby’s event in New York in July, bidding opened at $3 million (about ₹25 crore). It eventually sold for $44.6 million (about ₹374 crore).

Apex’s new owner, it turned out, was the billionaire Kenneth Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel.

In a sense, it isn’t surprising that he had his heart set on the fossil.
Apex is 11 ft tall and 150 million years old. It is 30% larger than the Stegosaurus that previously held the record for largest skeleton. It also has most of its armour, and most of its spiky spine and spiked tail intact.
To have such a treasure in private hands is troubling enough, palaeontologists say. What’s really worrying is that every time a fossil sale breaches records, a trend is reinforced.
Before Apex, the dinosaur that held the record for highest price fetched at auction was Stan, a Tyrannosaurus rex with a skeleton that was about 70% complete. It fetched $31.8 million at a Christie’s event in 2020. Researchers heaved a sigh of relief when it was revealed that it had been bought for display at the future Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi.
Sue, the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever found, was bought at auction by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, in 1997, for about $8.4 million (about $16 million today, adjusted for inflation). This was the first dinosaur skeleton ever sold at auction.
Last year, TRX-293 Trinity, a composite skeleton featuring bones from three different T-rex specimens, sold at auction for $6.13 million, to a private owner, never to be seen or heard of again. In 2022, a partial skeleton of an unnamed Gorgosaurus sold for $6.1 million, to an anonymous private buyer. It has not been seen or heard of since either.
These are extraordinarily high prices to pay, says Jeffrey Wilson Mantilla, professor of earth and environmental sciences, and curator at the Museum of Paleontology, at the University of Michigan. The fact that the rates have shot up as they have indicates that a troubling market is emerging, he adds, and there is still no sign of its ceiling on price.
In such cases, should the law intervene and declare — as it has with other things, such as rare artefacts and bits of cultural heritage — that certain kinds of fossils simply cannot be sold on the open market?
A universal law would certainly help, Wilson Mantilla says. “Each such specimen is part of a universal dataset that science and humanity has to work from. So, when you take that away and remove it from the grid, it presents a challenge.”
Scientists, for instance, are aching to get at Apex and gently interrogate its remains.
“The information stored in its bones is scientifically invaluable,” Wilson Mantilla says. “What does the microwear on the teeth reveal about Apex’s diet? Are there growth rings in its bones? What do they tell us? What questions about the order and arrangement of the species’ characteristic back plates could this specimen answer?”
Technology still emerging could answer questions we don’t even know to ask today. “For example, a century ago we didn’t know how to accurately measure lifespan, growth rate, environmental conditions and so much more.”
The law could begin by mandating what kinds of fossils can be retained in private possession by their finders. In large parts of the world, including in India, any fossil found on private land is, by law, the property of the landowner. As a result, dinosaur eggs sell for as little as a few hundred rupees, in fossil-rich regions such as Dhar in Madhya Pradesh.
Apex, in fact, was sold by Sotheby’s on behalf of Jason Cooper, a professional palaeontologist who dug it up on a plot he had bought, situated within a fossil-rich swathe in Colorado.
Cracking down on ownership, however, could affect the enthusiasm to excavate. “The question of ownership is a perplexing one that we just haven’t been able to manage,” Wilson Mantilla admits.
But it has to begin, he adds, with the understanding that some treasures belong to the people.