It is three meters high and almost seven meters long: the skeleton of a gorgosaurus changes hands at the New York auction house Sotheby's. The "Impetuous Lizard" joins the list of the most expensive dinosaur skeletons ever auctioned.
The complete skeleton of a Gorgosaurus has sold for $6.1 million in New York. This makes the three meter high and 6.7 meter long specimen one of the most expensive dinosaur skeletons ever auctioned, as announced by the auction house Sotheby's. The estimate was between five and eight million dollars.
The Gorgosaurus ("fierce lizard") lived in the Upper Cretaceous period and died out about 77 million years ago. It typically weighed two tons and was slightly smaller than its more famous relative, the Tyrannosaurus rex. The now auctioned specimen was found in 2018 in the US state of Montana. Since then it has always been privately owned.
A skeleton of the Deinonychus antirrhopus, which inspired the velociraptor in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, was auctioned at Christie's in May - they are actually two different species, but the screenwriters took some artistic liberties when designing their dinosaurs.
The auction raised $12.4 million, double the estimate. The three-meter-long fossil was excavated several years ago in Wolf Canyon, also in the US state of Montana, and has been privately owned ever since.
A skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex achieved the previous record price of $31.8 million in 2020. The "Stan" discovered in 1987 near Buffalo in the US state of South Dakota was one of the most complete specimens. It took paleontologists more than three years to excavate and piece together the 188 bones. The find served as a template for various Dino replicas set up in museums.
