British auction house Christie’s has canceled the sale of a Tyrannosaurus-rex skeleton worth about $15 25 million after suspicions that some of the bones were far from original.
“After consultation, Christie’s auction house decided to recall the lot. The consignor has now decided to release the specimen to the museum for all to admire,” said a representative of the auction house.
The representative Christie’s did not specify the reason for this decision, but the problem may lie in the fact that some of the bones of the skeleton named Shen are actually replicas of bones of another dinosaur. President of the Black Hills Institute for Geological Research and paleontologist Peter Larson said that some parts of Shen are remarkably similar to parts of Stan, another Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that went under the hammer at Christie’s for a record $31.8 million in 2020. Larson suggested that Shen’s owner supplemented some of the skeleton’s missing bones with casts of Stan’s bones.
“They are using Stan to sell a dinosaur that is not Stan,” Larson said.
The Black Hills Institute for Geological Research owns the intellectual property rights to Stan, despite his sale in 2020, and is selling painted polyurethane skeleton casts for $120,000.
The U.S. Museum of Natural History at the Field Museum, one of the largest museums in the United States. Field, one of the largest natural history museums in the world, said it is very difficult to find an entire dinosaur skeleton. In most cases, in the skeletons exhibited in museums, some of the bones are casts.
