How dinosaur fossils became collectables for the mega-rich

Dinosaur fossils of “Cera” the triceratops — (Image credit: Phillips)

Last week, the fossilised bones of a stegosaurus and an adult and juvenile allosaurus were seized under the Proceeds of Crime Act, alongside nine luxury flats in London and a collection of Chinese artworks. The forfeiture relates to an ongoing investigation into alleged money-laundering by Su Binghai, a Singapore-based businessman. That dinosaur fossils are listed among the seized assets, along with property and art, shouldn’t surprise us, says David Brown in The Times. “Dinosaur skeletons and bones have become the status item of choice for the mega-rich in recent times, with ancient fossilised remains accelerating past the prices of many Old Masters paintings.” The fossils had sold for a combined £12.4 million, including the buyer’s premium, in London last December at auction with Christie’s.

There’s “something powerful about the visual dialogue between an awe-inspiring 66-million-year-old lot and seminal works from the modern and contemporary eras”, says Miety Heiden, head of private sales at Phillips. The auction house is offering a complete skeleton of a juvenile Triceratops as the highlight of its “Out of This World” sale in New York on 19 November. “Cera”, as the triceratops has been named, is expected to fetch between $2.5 /million and $3.5 million. “Today’s collectors want to spice things up,” Christian D. Link, a Swiss expert who has partnered with Phillips, tells The Times. “They’re like the collectors of the Renaissance who liked to surround themselves with amazing things in their ‘chambers of wonders’.” That, says Link, explains the rise in prices. In 2020, a 67-million-year-old T. rex, called “Stan”, sold for $31.8 million, a record-high auction price until July 2024, when billionaire investor Ken Griffin paid $44.6 million for a 150-million-year-old stegosaurus, called “Apex”.

The problem with buying dinosaur fossils

Apex is now on display at the American Museum of Natural History. But loans don’t always solve the problem of scientific access. “Access to dinosaurs on loan… could be taken away at any point, meaning it would be impossible to verify any conclusions made using them,” Professor Richard Butler tells James Ashworth on the Natural History Museum blog. So, some palaeontologists prefer to simply ignore them.

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The arguments for and against commercial sales of fossils are many – and not all palaeontologists call for a blanket ban. But private ownership can also make it hard for scientists to know how many of a particular kind of fossil exists – say, that of a specific creature, and that can make tracking “variation” tricky. “Spike”, a 68-million-year-old caenagnathid dinosaur skeleton, for instance, has a mark that suggests it was feathered. It is for sale with Christie’s in London on 11 December, when it is expected to fetch between £3 million and £5 million.

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