OUR tyrannosaurus rex skeletona species of dinosaur that lived 67 million years ago will be auctioned on April 18 in Switzerland as part of the first such sale in Europe, auction house Koller announced today.

According to the catalog of the house in Zurich, the cost of this completed example, called “Trinity”, is almost 3.9 meters high and 11.6 meters long, is estimated at 6.11 to 8.15 million euros.

“That’s a very low estimate,” said Christian Link, Koller’s naturalist, as buyers were very excited.

According to the auction house, Trinity “is one of the most impressive surviving Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons, a well-preserved and superbly restored fossil.”

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According to Koller, it will be “the third time in the world and the first time in Europe” that a Tyrannosaurus rex (Tyrannosaurus rex for short) skeleton will go up for auction, marking the rare quality of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. .

“This is a great opportunity for someone to recover a fossil of this quality,” Link said, noting that most specimens of this type are in museums.

The Trinity frame was more than half assembled. using the bones of three different Tyrannosaurus rex specimens found between 2008 and 2013. in service in Montana and Wyoming in the US, again according to the sales catalog.

The expert stated that the T-Rex head belongs to one of the three T-Rex and is “incredibly well preserved.”

Link explained that the auction house wants to be transparent about the origin of the various parts of the skeleton.

There are only 32 Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons in the world.

Last year, auction house Christie’s was forced to withdraw another Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton from an auction in Hong Kong, also from Montana, due to doubts about parts of the skeleton.

According to a study published in 2021 in the scientific journal Nature, only 32 skeletons of an adult tyrannosaurus rex, one of the largest predators that lived on Earth, have been found in the world so far.

Dinosaur skeleton sales regularly spice up auction nights, even if it worries paleontologists who see the sale as another chance to display these skeletons in museums.

A complete skeleton of Gorgosaurus, a dinosaur related to Tyrannosaurus that lived more than 77 million years ago, was sold at Sotheby’s in New York in July for €5.72 million.

In May, also in New York but at Christie’s, the Deinonychus skeleton that inspired the Velociraptor in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) was sold for $12.4 million including expenses to an Asian.

This price, more than double the estimate, made it the second most expensive auction of a dinosaur skeleton far from a big star, however, the Tyrannosaurus rex was sold in 2020 for 31.8 million dinars.

Source: APE-AFP.