ZÜRICH, Switzerland — Ever wanted to own your own dinosaur? Well, this may be your lucky day.
A giant tyrannosaurus skeleton is set to go up for auction in Switzerland this April, only the third of its kind to ever go under the hammer at auction.
The skeleton, dubbed "TRX-293 Trinity", is not quite a full, original skeleton. It is actually made up of the bones of three different dinosaurs excavated over several years in Montana and Wyoming, a fact that has been called out by some scientists as misleading or inappropriate.
Cyril Koller, owner of the auction house where Trinity will be sold, said it is precisely because the skeleton was created from three different individuals that it earned its name, with the number 293 being in reference to the number of bones in the full skeleton.
Even though the bones do come from multiple different dinosaurs, over half of Trinity's skeleton, which stands at a massive 12.8 feet tall and 38 feet long, is made up of actual dinosaur bones, more than the 50% that experts require to consider a skeleton "high quality".
Tyrannosaurus fossils are incredibly rare finds, according to Hans Jacob-Siber, a paleontologist at Switzerland's Aathal Dinosaur Museum, and the vast majority of those discovered are on display in various museums.
"It’s not a cast or a copy, it’s the original. And there are very few, very few," Siber said. "In fact, until about 1970 or 1980, there used to be less than a dozen Tyrannosaurus, most of them were already in United States' museums."
Regardless of the controversy, Trinity is expected to sell for between five million and 8 million Swiss francs, which is the equivalent of between $5.43 million and $8.70 million in U.S. dollars.
Two other T-Rex skeletons that were sold at auction, named Sue and Stan, sold for $8.4 million in 1997 and $31.8 million in 2020 respectively. Koller said he expects Trinity will be bought by a "private individual", but he still expects the public will be able to see the skeleton one day.
Whether you are a private collector, a museum curator or a just a dinosaur fan, now is your chance to own a piece of history.
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