Scientifically, the fact that Big John has the largest known skull among documented Triceratops is “basically pointless,” acknowledges Iacopo Briano, a gallery owner and natural history auction expert who worked with Binoche et Giquello to promote the sale of Big John. Even so, “it’s very limited in how useful it would be for science,” says Denver Fowler, curator of the Badlands Dinosaur Museum at North Dakota’s Dickinson Museum Center. The mounted fossil cuts a dashing figure, and the animal has an intriguing wound in its frill that healed during its life. While it’s uncommon to find a Triceratops skull together with its skeleton, as was the case with Big John, the dinosaur’s completeness-with 75 percent of its skull and 60 percent of the full skeleton-isn’t unheard of, and its bones vary in quality from beautifully preserved to weathered. On October 21, the Paris-based auction houses Binoche et Giquello and Hôtel Drouot sold Big John on behalf of the Italian fossil firm Zoic for the highest price ever paid at a European auction for a fossil-and the highest price ever paid at auction for a fossil creature other than Tyrannosaurus rex. With a reconstructed skull stretching more than five feet long (155 centimeters), Big John’s noggin is a few inches larger than any Triceratops skull that has been documented in the scientific literature, earning the dinosaur a Guinness World Record. ( Venture inside the homes-and minds-of private fossil collectors in National Geographic magazine.) Some scientists are worried that the growing prices for ancient bones could drive future fossils into private collections, preventing researchers from studying the irreplaceable remains. rex skeleton called Stan sold to an anonymous buyer in a court-mandated auction for $31.8 million-the most ever paid for a fossil. A little more than a year ago, a scientifically important T. With much fanfare and a jaw-dropping sale price of $7.7 million (6.65 million euros) to an anonymous buyer last month, Big John became a big deal-and added fuel to an ongoing, thorny debate among scientists, auctioneers, commercial paleontologists, and private landowners.īig John is just the latest high-profile fossil to sell for millions of dollars. Then, in 2020, he sold the fossil to an Italian firm that prepared it for auction. museum would purchase it-but none came forward. For six years, he held on to the Triceratops in hopes that a U.S. The founder of a South Dakotan firm called PaleoAdventures, which digs up fossils for commercial sale, Stein nicknamed the fossil “Big John” after the owner of the ranch where he found it. Stein realized he was looking at the horns of a Triceratops, and despite the horns’ weathered condition, he could tell that they belonged to a big one. With many large fairs around the world, the trade must amount to “hundreds of millions of dollars every year but potentially a lot more than that,” he said.Walter Stein was exploring a ranch in Perkins County, South Dakota, in 2014 when he stumbled across a root-covered set of bones that had tumbled out of an eroding hillside. The size of the private market for fossils is unclear, but Barrett estimates it to be a fairly big trade, although most of the sales take place through private deals, not at auction. “There are a few very nice T-rex skulls in both museum collections and private collections and this one sounds like a particularly nice one,” he told CNN. Professor Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum in London, who has published research on the private trade of fossils, has not seen the specimen but said judging from its listing, it is “not a unique object but it is a rare one.” Most of the museum skulls you see are not actually real fossils.” There are not many pieces available to the public. “It could also be a corporation – oil and gas companies would be interested in having such items in their headquarters. “It would probably be a passionate collector,” Martigny said. While you might think that the market for dinosaur fossils is rather niche, Florian Martigny, co-founder of the site Luxify, said the lot could appeal to many buyers. LuxifyĮlite world of dinosaur fossil collecting
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