auction

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

Do you love paleontology? And do you have upwards of $750,000 dollars laying around? If so, then a Christie’s auction on April 16th in France might be of interest to you. On the bidding block that day will be the complete skeleton of a 65 million year old triceratops. It was found in 2004 by a ranch owner in South Dakota and eventually purchased by a private European collector. More than 70% of the bones are original, while the remaining 30% are made from casts. It is the fourth most complete skeleton of a triceratops ever found.

Image credit: KiwiHugger on flickr
Note: This is not the item up for auction.

In all, 150 items from natural history collections — fossils, skeletons and minerals — valued at some 1.6 million euros will be up for auction.

The sabre-toothed tiger skull is expected to fetch up to 45,000 euros, while a set of fossilized giant shark teeth have been valued at up to 4,000 euros.

Christie’s said it hoped to build on the success of last year’s paleontology auction that brought in more than a million euros and established 12 world records.

Also up for bids will be a tyrannosaurus egg, mineralized in agate, valued at between 20,000 and 25,000 euros; and an apatosaurus dinosaur tibia from the Jurassic Period, which is expected to raise up to 30,000 euros.

The last time such a notable dinosaur was on the auction block was in 1997, when a tyrannosaurus rex, named Sue, sold for $8.4 million dollars!

[via Physorg]