A 8-meter-long dinosaur skeleton sold at auction for $6.6m (about 5.5m) to a private US collector who was said to have fallen in love the largest triceratops found.
The 66-year-old skeleton is 60% complete and was found in South Dakota, USA in 2014. It was then assembled by experts in Italy.
The buyer will be returning to the US with his private collection. Drouot auctions in Paris stated that the buyer fell in love after seeing the dinosaur. Ten other bidders were defeated by the buyer, three of them driving the price up to 1.5 million in the last minutes.
I didn't expect this," said Iacopo Brino, the paleontologist who oversees the sale.
Big John was alive at the Cretaceous end, the last era of dinosaurs. He was buried in mud in a floodplain that preserved him. An injury to his horn near his cranium indicates that he was involved in at least one fight.
It was far from the $31.8m (23m), which was paid last year in New York for a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton aged 67 years.
However, the price almost guaranteed that museums would be excluded. Before the auction, Francis Duranthon was the director of the Toulouse Museum of Natural History. He stated that even the expected price was 20-25 years from his acquisitions budget.
Staff members prepare Big John for the Paris auction. Photograph by Christophe Petit-Tesson/EPA
Big John will be going to a private collection. However, the auction house stated that there is still the possibility for the buyer to lend the skeleton for public viewings at a gallery or museum.
Before the auction, scientists were able analyse the bones.
Due to its three horns, one on the forehead and one on the nose, the triceratops is one of the most distinct dinosaurs. This Latin name gives it its Latin name.
It is not easy to sell dinosaurs: In 2020, many specimens in Paris were sold without buyers after they did not reach their minimum price.
