For decades, dinosaurs have captured the world's imagination, from movies like Jurassic Park to towering dinosaur skeletons in major museums. Now, the fifth most complete T-rex skeleton will come up for auction on 6 October at Christie's with an estimate of $6-8 million (£4.65-6.2 mil).
In 1987, paleontologist Stan Sacrison discovered a number of dinosaur hip bones in the Cretaceous Badlands, a western expanse encompassing the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana of the US. The bones were misidentified as a Triceratops and were not revisited until 1992, when they were attributed to the T-rex. It took over 30,000 hours after excavation to piece together the nearly complete massive skeleton, comprised of 188 bones and standing 13 feet high by 40 feet long.
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STAN, named for the paleontologist who discovered him, is estimated to be 65 million years old and is said to have weighed between 14,000-16,000 pounds. From research and analysis of the skeleton, it has been surmised that STAN's life was marked by attacks and illnesses given his multiple injuries, including a broken neck, punctured rib and a wound at the back of his brain case.
After the reconstruction of the skeleton, STAN was taken on a year-long tour to Japan in July 1995 and then installed at the Black Hills Institute in Hill City, South Dakota, where it has been ever since. Casts of STAN have been widely duplicated, making it the most copied dinosaur skeleton, and are found in museums across the world, including the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.
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“We are honoured to be bringing STAN to auction and to have been entrusted with the stewardship of such and iconic and important T. rex," said James Hyslop, Head of Department, Scientific Instruments, Globes & Natural History at Christie’s said. "I’ll never forget the moment I came face to face with him for the first time, after his remount in Colorado – he looked even larger and more ferocious than I’d imagined, a specimen that only further establishes the T. rex’s position as the King of Dinosaurs."
Dinosaur bones, and especially complete skeleton specimens, are known to command high prices at auction. SUE, a T-rex skeleton of the same size as STAN but more complete (with 250 bones), was auctioned at Sotheby's in 1997 and sold for $8.3 million (£6.43 mil) to the Field Museum in Chicago. Another nearly complete dinosaur skeleton, suspected to be an Allosaurus, sold for $2.4 million (£1.86 mil) at French auction house Aguttes in 2018.
