This multimillion-dollar sale at Christie's comes from the hand of a different kind of artist: Mother Nature.
The skeleton of a Deinonychus antirrhopus, a species that became one of the world's most recognizable dinosaurs after the movie "Jurassic Park", was sold by Christie's late on Thursday. The trend of high-priced fossil sales has irked some paleontologists, who fear that fossils could become lost to science if they are bought by private individuals rather than public institutions.
The first public sale of a Deinonychus, a bipedal dinosaur known for its menacing claws on its feet, took place at the auction house. The sale price was more than double that of the auction house.
The velociraptors are more like a Deinonychus in the movie than in the novel.
Most of the skull is reconstructed, but the rest of the skeleton is real, according to the auction house. The specimen was excavated from private land in Montana about a decade ago by Jack and Roberta Owen, who were self-taught paleontologists. The most recent owner is anonymous.
Jack Owen said in an interview this week that he had no idea it would end up at Christie's. He worked as a fencing contractor and as a ranch manager.
Owen had struck a deal with the owner of the ranch where he worked that allowed him to dig for fossils and split the profits. He found some of the bone fragments in an area where he had already found two other animals. He and Roberta carefully collected the specimen using a scalpel and toothbrush.
He said the profit he received wasn't anywhere close to what he saw when it went for millions of dollars. Owen said his fossil hunting was not driven by money.
He said that it was about the hunt and the find.
John H. Ostrom gave the fossils the name Deinonychus, meaning terrible claw, because he believed the dinosaur used a curved hunting claw. It was Ostrom's discovery that paved the way for scientists to understand some dinosaurs today.
Academic paleontologists might be interested in studying the specimen.
The practice of auctioning off fossils has long been opposed by paleontologists because they fear the fossils could end up being sold at prices that are out of reach of museums.
The issue gained prominence with the sale of Sue, the T. rex skeleton, to the Field Museum in 1997. It has received renewed scrutiny after a T. rex skeleton dubbed Stan brought in a record $31.8 million, nearly quadrupling its estimated high of $8 million.
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology urged Christie's to restrict the sale to institutions that would care for the specimen in perpetuity.
Jessica M. Theodor, the society's president, said in an interview that they felt the fossils belonged in museums.
Many commercial paleontologists argue that their work is critical to science and that they need to be paid for their work so they can keep doing it.
Hudson said that the dinosaurs would be cut off from science if people like us weren't on the ground.
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