For the first time in Europe, a skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex will be auctioned. This has been announced by the Swiss auction house Koller. The dinosaur, which lived about 67 million years ago, is almost 4 meters high and over 11.5 meters long. According to a conservative estimate, the skeleton should fetch 6 to 8 million euros. The auction is April 18.
The skeleton named Trinity “is one of the most spectacular extant T. Rex skeletons, a well-preserved and beautifully restored fossil,” says the Zurich auction house. It is the third time ever that a T. Rex has gone under the hammer.
More than half of Trinity’s skeleton is composed of bones from three different T. Rex specimens. They were found between 2008 and 2013 in the northwestern states of Montana and Wyoming in the United States.
So far, only 32 adult T. Rexes have been recovered worldwide, according to a study to be published in 2021 in the scientific journal Nature was published. The Tyrannosaurus rex is one of the largest predators that ever lived on Earth.
In October 2020, the skeleton of a T. Rex in New York fetched a record amount of $ 31.8 million (27 million euros) at an auction.