Sold for £5.5m, Big John the triceratops
He is the largest triceratops skeleton ever discovered and now the beast affectionately named Big John has sold for a suitably monster price.
The 66million-year-old fossil fetched £5.5million when he went under the hammer at a Paris auction house – a european record.
The gentle giant is believed to have died on an ancient flood plain on an island continent stretching from present-day Alaska to Mexico, allowing the conservation of his skeleton in mud. He was discovered in 2014 in South Dakota.
The triceratops, with its huge collared skull and three horns, was a plant-eating giant of the Cretaceous period.
Big John was named after the owner of the land where he was found and is certified by the Guinness World Records as the largest documented skeleton of its kind.
His body is 23ft long and stands 8ft high at the hips. The skull represents more than a third of his total length, with two large horns measuring 3ft 7in. The third horn on his nose, however, is missing.
The skeleton is more than 60 per cent complete and the skull more than 75 per cent, making the fossil unique. Around 200 pieces of bone were assembled for the auction. Big John was sold to a private collector in the US at the Drouot auction house.
The collector was ‘absolutely thrilled with the idea of being able to bring a piece like this to his personal use’, Djuan Rivers, a representative for the buyer, said. Paleontology expert Iacopo Briano said: ‘The overall quality of Big John really deserved this price. For a triceratops and for an herbivore, this is unbelievable.’
Last year, a Tyrannosaurus rex was sold for almost £23million in New York, becoming the most expensive dinosaur ever sold.