Triceratops Still Looking For A New Home

Back in March, we wrote about an upcoming Christie’s auction on a triceratops skeleton found in South Dakota. The auction was yesterday and sadly, the winning bid did not meet the owner’s reserve price of $800,000. The highest bid for the specimen was only a paltry $784,000.

Source: Christie’s

It was the first major dinosaur skeleton to go on public auction since a Tyrannosaurus rex dubbed Sue, after the woman who found it, was sold for $8 million by Sotheby’s in New York in 1997.

The triceratops bidding started at 420,000 euros (about $670,000), but when the hammer came down, the top bid was $784,000, which Christie’s officials later said was shy of the $800,000 minimum set by the owner. Officials at the auction house would not say who submitted the top bid.

Gilles Fauchon, 65, said he collected pledges of almost $100,000 from “dinosaur fans” to try to bring the beast home to his town along the French-German border, even though he realized he had no chance of winning. “I’m here for the sport” he said.

[Via Washington Post]

More Information:
Christie’s - Triceratops
Dinochick Blogs - The Selling of Fossils

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