The 150-million-year-old specimen is valued at up to $6 million. Some paleontologists worry this auction and earlier ones are driving fossil market speculators.
In 1999, Brock Sisson was 16 years old and working at the Museum of Ancient Life in Utah. He was handed a box and warned not to drop it. Inside sat the upper jaw and nose horn of a young Ceratosaurus, a 150-million-year-old predatory dinosaur.
In July, Sotheby’s will auction off that specimen, estimating its value at $4 million to $6 million. The sale arrives about a year after the Sotheby’s auction of “Apex” the stegosaurus, which sold to the hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin for $45 million.
With the looming ceratosaur sale, paleontologists of both the academic and commercial varieties are expressing concern that another multimillion-dollar auction will distort the fossil marketplace. Driving more speculation, they worry, could further spike the already rising prices of fossil digs and lead to the duping of investors.
Experts at Sotheby’s respond that such sales — by attracting the interest of potential donors — inject more philanthropy in the field of paleontology.
Prospectors discovered the ceratosaur, which the sellers have chosen not to nickname, in 1996 near Bone Cabin Quarry, Wyo. It is only the fourth Ceratosaurus skeleton ever found, and the only juvenile. The 10-foot-long animal is notable for its complete skull, made up of 57 “paper thin, super delicate” bones, Mr. Sisson said.
