Trade in dinosaur fossils is good for science

The great auction houses of America and Europe often sell masterpieces by long-dead artists to a grey-haired crowd. They also serve the booming demand for actual fossils. In 2020 Christie’s sold “Stan”—one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever discovered—for a record-breaking $31.8m. In April “Trinity”, a composite of three T. rex specimens, fetched $6.1m at the Koller auction house in Zurich—one of six dino-lots to have breached the $6m threshold since “Stan” was sold. At the end of July Sotheby’s is due to auction off another nearly complete specimen.

The buyers are typically rich collectors (Leonardo DiCaprio, a Hollywood actor, has an interest in dinosaur skulls). That alarms many palaeontologists, who fear that museums and other scientific institutions are being priced out of the market by individuals who will lock their collections away. Even when scientists are granted access to specimens held privately, many journals have in recent years refused in protest to publish the resulting research.