Auctioneers' first times can be quite special.
“It’s my first mammoth skull,” said Nicolas Fierfort to France Bleu Normandie, while he is organizing a “Natural Histories and Paleontology” sale this Sunday in Eure.
Main attraction concocted by the Évreux auction house: a mammoth skull, 40,000 years old.
It is among the 191 lots of fossils or stuffed animals in this auction.
This “elephas primigenius” was discovered in the permafrost of Yakutia, in Siberia (Russia), specifies France info.
And its age is not the only impressive figure in this sale: its starting price has been set at 40,000 euros.
It could even fetch between 70,000 and 90,000 euros.
98 centimeter tusks
Tear off, without damaging it.
“He is in good condition, he has the bottom of his jaw, his teeth, his tusks,” describes Nicolas Fierfort, before joking to France Bleu Normandie: “when we are his age, we will not be in this state ".
The tip of its tusks, 98 centimeters long, is nevertheless broken, but the fracture adds history to this skull.
Temporal wear and tear is not the issue.
“It was he during his lifetime who broke them while trying to search the ground to find food,” assures the auctioneer.
Read alsoThe Durfort mammoth visible again at the Natural History Museum
Prized by collectors for its “historical and ornamental interest”, this piece is currently held by a paleontologist collector from Puy-de-Dôme, who is seeking to sell it.
The skull of the imposing mammal will not, however, be the only interest of the auction.
On the menu: a dinosaur tooth, butterflies, a parrotfish, a sperm whale eardrum and “magnificent” megalodon tails.