The dinosaur skeleton Artemis is for sale in Zurich.Image: Koller Auktionen
The skeleton of a dinosaur will be sold at auction in Zurich this Monday. For years, these fossils have attracted the desire of the ultra-rich, accused of stealing precious specimens from museums and scientists. A “cliché”, according to a manager of the Zurich auction house.
If you like dinosaurs and you have half a million francs, this is an opportunity not to be missed. This Monday, June 17, a complete skeleton will be auctioned in Zurich by the Koller auction house. The specimen, called Artemis, is a dryosaurus altusa herbivore that lived in the Upper Jurassic, 150 million years ago.
The skeleton is 2.6 meters long and could be reconstructed with “extreme precision,” says Koller. It is 70% complete and its estimated price ranges between 380,000 and 600,000 francs. This is not the first time that a dinosaur has been put up for auction in Switzerland. Last year, a T-Rex was sold for 4.8 million francs, again by Koller.
If these operations always attract attention, it is mainly because of the profile of certain buyers. Owning dinosaur skeletons has, in recent years, been the new fad of the ultra-rich. In the same way as yachts and Rolexes, ironically the Business Insider.
The phenomenon was undoubtedly popularized by the interest that certain Hollywood stars have in these fossils. Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe and Nicolas Cage own or have owned significant collections. To the point where the magazine The Cut wondered why actors were so obsessed with dinosaur skeletons. In 2019, W Magazine called these objects “the hottest trend in the art market.”
Not just for the rich
In truth, this craze is older, believes Christian Link, head of the “Out of This World” department at Koller. According to him, interest in dinosaur skeletons began to develop at the start of the millennium, particularly after the auction of Sue, a T-Rex sold for $8.4 million in 1997.
The T-Rex Sue, exhibited in Chicago.Picture: AP
And, contrary to what one might imagine, this is not a trend reserved only for the rich, he assures.
“Of course, it takes a few million to buy a complete T-Rex, but I think the interest is also great among ordinary people and small collectors”
“There really is something for everyone,” insists Christian Link. “In addition to complete skeletons, there are also ammonites, small fossils, leaves,” he lists. The amounts, which vary between “a few hundred francs and several million”, vary greatly. Like the buyers.
“It’s a very diverse clientele. From young people wanting to expand their small collection to billionaires who want to show off with something very big”
Christian Link, Koller Auktionen
Beyond the profile, one could wonder if these fossils should not rather belong to museums. Especially since the wealthiest buyers are accused of having driven up prices, to the detriment of scientific institutions.
“Dinosaurs become a luxury item accessible only to the richest», lamented a paleontologist interviewed by El País. THE Business Insider evokes a “very worrying trend”, which sees private buyers monopolizing precious fossils at “exorbitant prices”, “thus excluding researchers and museums from the market”.
“A cliche”
Questions firmly brushed aside by Christian Link: “To be honest, the image of the greedy millionaire who lives in his bunker and wants to keep everything for himself is a cliché,” he declares.
“All the collectors I know are usually very proud to collaborate with a museum, if by chance they buy something scientifically interesting, like a dinosaur that wasn’t known before.”
Christian Link, Koller Auktionen
Artemis in its entire length.Image: Koller Auktionen
To better explain his point of view, Christian Link quotes Dr. Dennis Hansen, from the Department of Natural History at the University of Zurich: “All these pieces have remained in the ground for sixty, seventy, a hundred million years . When they are taken out of the ground, they can sometimes be bought by a private collector, but in general, his descendants are no longer interested in dinosaurs and give them to a museum,” he says. And to add:
“After tens of millions of years, one human generation more or less, it doesn’t really matter”
Christian Link, Koller Auktionen
“There are still a lot of fossils buried in the ground,” he continues. “If no one collects them or prepares them, once they come to the surface, they corrode and are going to disappear anyway.”
This triceratops was sold for seven million dollars in 2021, in Paris.Image: imago
Thousands of hours of work
Christian Link nevertheless recognizes that “prices have increased a lot“. “Previously,” he illustrates, “individuals had virtually no interest in owning dinosaurs.”
However, in his eyes, these objects are not that expensive: “Preparing a skeleton of a large dinosaur can take up to ten years of work. Considering the thousands of hours of work this represents, I think this price is justified,” he concludes.
