The 70-foot (22-meter) dinosaur skeleton sold for six million euros ($6.4 million) on Saturday at the Collin du Bocage and Barbarossa auction houses.
An anonymous collector acquired the vegetarian apatosaurus, which was unearthed in the United States, for 4.7 million euros, rising to 6 million including costs. The buyer promised to allow it to be displayed in a museum.
“We are happy that the buyer intends to lend the skeleton to an institution,” said Olivier Collin du Bocage.
The skeleton of the huge herbivore is made up of 75 to 80 percent of the original bones and is approximately 150 million years old. Auctioneers Barbarossa said on their website that it was “the largest dinosaur ever sold at auction worldwide.”
Once excavated, the remains were sent to France for two years of restoration work at the Paleomoove Laboratory in Luberon, southeastern France.
The skeleton of the gigantic creature, which weighed around twenty tons during its lifetime, spent the summer in the orangerie of Dampierre-en-Yvelines, a castle about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of Paris, where the sale took place. .
The remains of the Apatosaurus, nicknamed Vulcan, were discovered in 2018 in Wyoming, United States, where the law allows individuals to acquire concessions in the hope of excavating prehistoric bones. The excavations took place between 2019 and 2021, financed by a French investor. The fossil, which includes 300 bones, was then sent to France to be restored.
Its value prior to sale at auction had been estimated between three and five million euros. Under the sales contract, the future owner agrees to give paleontologists access to study the dinosaur.
The price reached today is the sixth highest paid for a dinosaur skeleton at auction and the third highest for a herbivore. The absolute record is the $44.6 million paid for a stegosaurus last July at a Sotheby’s auction in New York.
With information from AFP and EFE
