EPA
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NOS News•today, 05:10
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Sotheby’s auction house in New York has sold a rare intact Gorgosaurus skeleton for nearly $6.1 million. According to the auction house, it was the first Gorgosaurus skeleton to ever go under the hammer. All other Gorgossaurus remains are known to be part of museum collections.
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Related to the more famous Tyrannosaurus rex, Gorgosaurus lived about 77 million years ago in present-day North America. This particular skeleton was discovered in 2018 in Havre, Montana, not far from the border with Canada.
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Like the T. rex, this Gorgosaurus has a large head, an impressive mouth full of serrated teeth and two short forearms. The skeleton is 3 meters high and almost 7 meters long, making the Gorgosaurus smaller than the T. rex. It is believed that is why he was faster.
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Trix in Dippy
The anonymous buyer of the skeleton is allowed to give his new purchase a nickname, as often happens with intact dinosaur skeletons. Museum Naturalis in Leiden has a T. rex called Trix and the Natural History Museum in London has a Diplodocus called Dippy. The name of the Gorgosaurus is still unknown. Gorgeous George is doing well on social media.
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It is the second time that Sotheby’s has auctioned a dinosaur skeleton. In 1997, the auction house sold a T. rex named Sue to the Field Museum in Chicago for over $8 million. That wasn’t the most expensive fossil ever sold: the record was set two years ago, when the remains of T. rex Stan turned out to be worth nearly $32 million at auction.
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