Dinosaur skeleton fetches 6 million euros in Paris sale

Mountmakers specialists work on assembling the skeleton of an Apatosaurus’ dinosaur named “Vulcain”, displayed at the Dampierre castle prior to an auction in Dampierre-en-Yvelines, south of Paris, on July 10, 2024. Agence France-Presse

DAMPIERRE-EN-YVELINES, France — The skeleton of a 22-meter-long dinosaur (70 feet) fetched six million euros ($6.4 million) Saturday, AFP learned from auction houses Collin du Bocage and Barbarossa.

An anonymous collector snapped up the vegetarian apatosaurus, which was dug up in the United States, for 4.7 million euros rising to 6 million including costs.

The buyer pledged to allow it to be displayed in a museum.

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“We are happy that the buyer intends to lend it to an institution,” said Olivier Collin du Bocage.

The skeleton of the giant herbivore is made up of 75 to 80 percent of the original bones and is roughly 150 million years old.

Auctioneers Barbarossa said on its website that it was “the biggest 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, southeast France.

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The giant creature’s skeleton, which weighed around twenty tonnes during its lifetime, spent the summer in the orangerie of Dampierre-en-Yvelines, a chateau some 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, the United States, where the law allows individuals to acquire concessions in the hope of excavating prehistoric bones.

Excavations took place between 2019 and 2021, financed by a French investor. The fossil, which includes 300 bones, was then shipped to France to be restored.

Its presale value at auction had been estimated at between three and five million euros.

Under the contract of sale the future owner undertakes to give paleontologists access to the dinosaur to study it.