Gorgosaurus Fetches $6.1 Million at Sotheby’s

The fossilized gorgosaurus skeleton has fetched a whopping $6.1 million in auction at Sotheby’s. The sale is the latest in a disturbing trend, as more and more dinosaur fossils become monetized and lost to research.

The skeleton is nine feet tall and 22 feet long. It was excavated in 2018 in the fossil-rich Judith River Formation in Montana. Sotheby’s, which had estimated the bones would go for between $5 million and $8 million, isn’t saying who sold or bought the piece.

The auction house’s statement before the sale drips with extreme unctuousness. “In my career, I have had the privilege of handling and selling many exceptional and unique objects,” said senior veep Cassandra Hatton. “But few have the capacity to inspire wonder and capture imaginations like this unbelievable Gorgosaurus skeleton.”

Now that it's sold, only the buyer will get to have his wonder inspired and imagination captured. Whether an actual paleontologist ever gets to see the fossil again will be up to the whims of the anonymous millionaire.

“I’m totally disgusted, distressed and disappointed because of the far-reaching damage the loss of these specimens will have for science,” Thomas Carr, a vertebrate paleontologist at Carthage College, told the New York Times. “This is a disaster.”

The pro-privatizers say that by putting a price tag on fossil finds, many more discoveries will be made than if excavations were left to nonprofit research institutions. Yeah okay, but if a discovery is purchased it might as well remain undiscovered, as far as science is concerned.

Most of the existing gorgosaurus fossils were found in Canada, which is a good thing since that country wisely prohibits private sales of paleontological finds. Had the Sotheby’s skeleton been unearthed about fifty miles farther north, it would have been spared the tawdry spectacle of having its old bones sold off to the highest bidder.

Photo credit: Julia Nikhinson / Associated Press