Dinosaurs, that obscure object of desire for which collectors pay millions

From the wastelands of Wyoming, Montana, Dakota or Wisconsin, in the United States, ghosts from the past emerge that end up in auction houses, where they are sold for millions of euros.

Maybe when someone has everything, it only remains to return to childhood.

In that secret trunk that is memory, dinosaurs live.

Collectors, institutions and even Hollywood actors pay fortunes for their skeletons.

There was always trade.

But a gap was opened when in 1997 the Sotheby's auction house sold a

nicknamed

for 8.4 million dollars (similar figure in current euros).

Nine bidders competed for the animal found in South Dakota.

The Chicago Field Museum of Natural History won.

There,

ended up with her bones.

However, light filtered through the crack, and companies dedicated to the search for these animals and auction firms saw a new business reflected.

During November 2020, at Christie's New York, another

,

, sold for $31.8 million.

Never had a dinosaur cost so much.

Also discovered in Dakota in 1987, its skeleton includes 188 bones.

70% of the total.

And his skull is the most complete and best preserved known.

Two years later it was learned that the buyer had been the United Arab Emirates for its new natural history museum.

, to Hong Kong

on November 30, for which he asks 25 million dollars.

Paleontologists raise their voices.

"They are thieves of time," they accuse.

They complain about private collectors and auctioneers.

Fossils are valuable for the information they contain.

In the immense hall of an oligarch they are only a handful of old bones.

Science loses them.

“It is a destructive and desperate situation for scientists.

There is no end to this uncontrolled commodification,” criticizes Thomas Carr, a paleontologist at Carthage College (Wisconsin).

In May, Christie's sold a skeleton,

, of

(velociraptor cousin), the only one in private hands, for $12.4 million;

its nemesis, Sotheby's, responded two months later with one of only 20 known gorgosaurs.

He achieved 6.1 million.

Earlier, in 2021, the Parisian house Drouot auctioned a

,

, for 6.6 million euros, whose whereabouts are unknown.

"The rich have understood fossils as luxury items," laments the researcher.

Science needs specimens to understand them.

It takes 70 gorgosaurs if you want to differentiate the characteristics that determine their sex.

The voracity seems to come from the auction houses.

We are open platforms —they defend themselves— to supply, demand;

and generosity.

"Given its size and importance, it is possible that a private buyer would loan or donate the skeleton to a museum," says James Hyslop, head of science at Christie's London.

"There aren't many private homes that can house a 40

-foot-long

The deep problem comes from those remote lands where they are.

US law dictates that everything that appears on private property belongs to its owner.

That's why most of the skeletons come from there.

Nothing prevents its export.

Italy, France, Brazil, China or Mongolia (actor Nicolas Cage had to return a

skull to the Asian country because it had been looted) have their borders closed.

In Spain, the fossils of vertebrate mammals —says José Luis Sanz, professor of paleontology at the Autonomous University of Madrid, to whom this trade seems “unacceptable”— belong to the State.

In his California mansion, Leonardo DiCaprio displays his Diplodocus and Allosaurus skulls.

He once upon a time in Hollywood.

Millions of years ago.

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