More and more paleontologists are ringing alarm bells about high-profile auctions in which dinosaur fossils sell for outrageous sums. The most recent example involves a 77 million-year-old Gorgosaurus skeleton that Sotheby's sold for over US$6 million in August 2022. But that's not even close to the most anyone ever paid for a dinosaur. In May 2022, Christie's sold a Deinonychus skeleton for $12.4 million. And a couple of months before that, Abu Dhabi's Department of Culture and Tourism paid an eye-popping $31.8 million for Stan, a remarkably complete T. rex from South Dakota's Hell Creek Formation that's going to be the centerpiece of the Persian Gulf city's new natural history museum. Some scientists are so dismayed they are speaking out. University of Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte told the Daily Mail that auction houses turn valuable specimens into 'little more than toys for the rich.' Thomas Carr from Carthage College in Wisconsin was even more forthright, saying,...
learn more
