Special T. Rex Goes Up for Sale
An auction of natural history specimens in Los Angeles this weekend will determine whether bones believed to be additional parts of the first Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered will be reunited with those of the dinosaur uncovered more than 100 years ago.
Experts say that a collection of T. rex fossil bones and fragments from the Cretaceous Period, to be auctioned Sunday at Bonhams & Butterfields auction house, are most likely parts of the same prehistoric creature discovered in 1900 by paleontologist Barnum Brown.
That argument gained more heft earlier this week when South Dakota paleontologist Japheth Boyce -- who collected the bones from their Wyoming excavation site and prepared them for auction -- flew to London with a cast of a portion of jawbone that seemed to connect perfectly with a section of jawbone housed in London.
“As soon as I touched it, I knew,” said Boyce of the fragment excavated by Brown a century ago. “I made the discovery in London on Monday, changed underwear yesterday at home and then flew here.”
But because of a complicated legal dispute over ownership of what the auction house is advertising as “Barnum” -- after the discoverer of the species -- the court-ordered sale must close Sunday, with the collection of skeletal remains going to the highest bidder.
“It will sell. There is no reserve,” said Thomas Lindgren, director of Bonhams & Butterfields’ natural history department. The collection is the highlight of an auction that will also feature dinosaur eggs, meteorites, gemstones and other treasures.
While the British Museum, which owns the earlier discovery, may bid on the remains here, so may anyone else. According to the auction house, the offering is the second time a partial T. rex has come up for public auction. The first was in 1997, when Chicago’s Field Museum paid $8.3 million for “Sue,” the most complete T. rex ever found, which was excavated in South Dakota. Scientists believe that the species thrived between 65 million and 85 million years ago.
Sunday is also too soon for the auctioneers to gain scientific confirmation that the bones are indeed from the first T. rex discovered. If they are, Boyce said, the specimens, which must be purchased together, could be worth four to 10 times the original appraisals of $400,000 to $900,000. A potential buyer must take a calculated risk, he said.
“We’ve got enough circumstantial evidence to put us at the third commercial in ‘Law and Order’ -- it’s not enough to convict, but we’re getting close,” joked Boyce, quoting fellow paleontologist Robert Bakker, who has also been studying the connection between the two sets of bones.
Boyce said the bones discovered in 1900 constitute about 13% of the total skeleton. The bones to be auctioned, found close to the earlier discovery in Wyoming, potentially represent an additional 20% of the skeleton and include a partial skull with teeth, along with portions of bone from the arms, legs, pelvis and feet.
“That is about one-third of a dinosaur, which would put it in the top six of the most complete T. rexes,” Boyce said. Remnants of only about 20 T. rexes have been found, he added.
As part of the deal, the buyer of the collection will also get what Boyce calls “goop”: rare evidence of the dinosaur’s stomach contents, which include bones from Triceratops, duck-billed dinosaurs and even T. rex.
“When paleontologists find big bones like these -- we call them ‘speed bumps’ -- we don’t know if he passed these bones, or threw them back up, or whether when he died his gut was filled from feeding,” Boyce said. He added that the presence of T. rex bones does not imply cannibalism in the species but rather that the creatures were opportunistic scavengers -- or perhaps, while fighting, the T. rex “may have ripped off an arm and swallowed it.”
Lindgren said the scientific community hopes that the British Museum buys the collection or that it goes to someone willing to donate or lend the bones so they may be reunited with those in London.
“It’s more of a scientific specimen than a display specimen,” said Lindgren of the bones, darkened, worn and crumbled by time. “What we’re selling is scientific data.”
Sunday’s auction also includes a 40-foot-long cast of a T. rex known as “Stan” -- named after amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison, who discovered the dinosaur’s pelvis in a sandy cliff near Buffalo, S.D. The real “Stan” bones toured Japan in the mid-1990s and are currently on exhibit in their home state. The cast is expected to bring $90,000 to $110,000.
