Paris (AFP)
"Big John", the largest known triceratops, over 66 million years old and with an 8 meter long skeleton, is on display in Paris until October 20, before an auction the next day in the Drouot Hotel.
The two-meter-wide skull, some 200 bones and large horns of the animal were being assembled on Tuesday behind the windows of an exhibition gallery, in the Marais district, in central Paris.
Estimated between 1.2 and 1.5 million euros, this unique specimen for this size, more than 60% complete (75% for the skull), was discovered in 2014 in the United States, in South Dakota. , by geologist Walter W. Stein Bill.
The restoration of the fossil was carried out in Trieste (Italy).
The prehistoric animal lived in Laramidia, an extinct island-continent that stretched from present-day Alaska to Mexico.
His death in a floodplain, probably after a fight as indicated by a laceration near the skull, allowed the skeleton to be preserved in the mud, a sediment without biological activity.
For the first time on the market, "Big John" will be auctioned on October 21 by the auction house Giquello.
From October 18 to 20, the triceratops will be exhibited in the salons of the Hotel Drouot, in Paris.
"For this triceratops, which has a worldwide export license," we have around ten possible buyers, "Me Alexandre Giquello, auctioneer, told AFP." We present at the same time a diplodocus femur 150 million years old and a 100,000 year old mammoth skull. "
This sale comes as the craze for dinosaur skeletons continues.
The prices reached record amounts, to the chagrin of museums and research centers, often unable to outbid.
A few weeks before, in New York, a 67 million-year-old T-Rex skeleton was sold for $ 31.8 million, smashing records for a dinosaur, when the estimate had been set between 6 and 8 millions of dollars.
In 2020, however, several dinosaurs offered in Paris had not found takers, the reserve prices not having been reached.
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