The skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a species of dinosaur that lived 67 million years ago, was put up for auction today (April 18) in Switzerland, the first such sale in Europe. Selling dinosaur skeletons worries auctioneers but disappoints palaeontologists, who are more likely to be available for scientific research than for some weirdo’s collection.

According to the catalog of the Zurich house, it was named “Trinity”, was almost 3.9 meters high and 11.6 meters long, and sold for $6.2 million. Trinity’s skeleton was more than half assembled from the bones of three different Tyrannosaurus rex specimens found between 2008 and 2013 in formations in Montana and Wyoming in the US, again according to the sales catalog.

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 euros.

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.

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

According to AFP, BBC.