A rare dinosaur fossil that inspired the appearance and behavior of the fearsome Velociraptor in the movie "Jurassic Park" sold for over $12 million at an auction.
The Deinonychus antirrhopus skeleton, which was unearthed in Montana in 2015, has 126 bones dating to between 115 million and108 million years ago.
The first Deinonychus fossils were discovered in 1931 by the American paleontologist, and later descriptions of the animal sowed the imagination of Michael Crichton, the novelist behind the "Jurassic Park" series.
Was it really? Deinonychus is a metal name that means "terrible claw" in Greek, a fitting name for an athletic and sharp-toothed meat-eater. John Ostrom at Yale University acknowledged in an interview with The New York Times that most people don't understand Greek.
Stan, the most expensive T. rex ever sold, has been found.
When fans saw the dinosaurs that were called "Velociraptors" in "Jurassic Park", they were really seeing the movie's interpretation of Deinonychus.
Paleontologists are also enamored with the paleo-beast, and many were dismayed to see an anonymous buyer take ownership of a superb Deinonychus specimen. Private individuals who buy fossils are not obligated to share their purchases with scientists, even if they choose to display them in museums, because they can pull them at any time.
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Deinonychus is not a common fossil species by any stretch, its sample size is nowhere near what it is for a big, more easily preserved species like T. rex.
Preparators filled in the missing parts of the Deinonychus skeleton with casts.
According to Christie's, the most complete skeleton of his species ever found is the Deinonychus specimen.
According to Christie, Deinonychus would have stood on one leg, holding the target with its long arms, and impaled its prey with a powerful kick.
The exhibit "King of Dinosaurs" ran from June 2020 to December 2021 at the Natural History Museum of Denmark and showed Hector alongside five other dinosaur species. After Deinonychus went extinct, the T. rex lived for 66 million years.
Many dinosaur fossils have hit the auction block in recent years. In 1997, the most complete T. rex skeleton on record, nicknamed Sue, sold for about $8.3 million to the Field Museum in Chicago, which relied on private donors to help raise the funds. The most expensive dinosaur ever sold at auction was Stan the T. rex from South Dakota, which sold for $32 million.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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