Christie’s cancels T rex skeleton auction after doubts raised
The British auction house Christie’s has been forced to call off the £20m auction of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton just days before it was due to go under the hammer after a well-known paleontologist raised concerns that parts of it looked similar to another dinosaur.
Christie’s said on Monday that the 1,400kg (3,100lb) skeleton – nicknamed Shen – had been withdrawn from the auction in Hong Kong on 30 November, when it was set to be the star lot.
In a brief statement, a spokesperson for Christie’s in London said: “After consultation with the consignor of the Tyrannosaurus rex scheduled for sale on 30 November in Hong Kong, Christie’s has decided to withdraw the lot. The consignor has now decided to loan the specimen to a museum for public display.”
Christie’s refused to explain why the T rex, which had an auction estimate of $15-$25m (£12.7-£21.2m), was being withdrawn.
However, it comes after Pete Larson, a paleontologist and the president of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in South Dakota, raised concerns that some of Shen appeared remarkably similar to Stan, another T rex skeleton auctioned off by Christie’s for a record-breaking $31.8m in 2020.
Larson said it looked as if the unnamed owner of Shen – which means Godlike in Chinese – had supplemented some of the skeleton’s missing bones with casts of Stan’s skeleton.
“They’re using Stan to sell a dinosaur that’s not Stan,” Larson told the New York Times. “It’s very misleading.”
The Black Hills Institute holds the intellectual property rights to Stan, even after its sale in 2020, and it sells painted polyurethane replicas casts of the skeleton for $120,000 each.
Excavated from Montana, Shen stands 4.6 metres (15ft) tall and 12 metres long, and is thought to be an adult male that lived about 67m years ago.
It is very rare for complete dinosaur skeletons to be found, according to the Field Museum in Chicago, one of the largest natural history museums in the world. Most frames on display use casts of bones to complete the skeleton. The Field Museum estimates there are 380 bones in a T rex.
The auction house had said about 80 of Shen’s bones were original. In its original materials, Christie’s said: “Shen the T rex has been researched by the leading academic paleontologists Dr David A Burnham, professor of paleontology and theropod specialist, and Dr John R Nudds, professor of paleontology, department of Earth and environmental sciences, University of Manchester.”
Francis Belin, the president of Christie’s Asia Pacific, had said: “It is an honour to be entrusted with the first auction in Asia of a T rex skeleton – a groundbreaking moment for the market in the region.
“This is a world-class specimen for museums and institutions, and its auction in Hong Kong in November offers an unprecedented opportunity for Apac [Asia Pacific] collectors to own an exceptional piece of our global natural history.
“We have witnessed a growing demand in the region for objects of historical significance, and we sincerely look forward to engaging museums, institutions, collectors and the general public around the world for this remarkable opportunity.”