Dinosaur auction

This real Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton will go to the highest bidder at an incredible natural history auction to be held on October 3 in Las Vegas. Expected to sell for $2 to $8 million dollars, the female T. rex is just one of 50 lots on the block, including a 7-foot-long fossil shark and a 28-foot-long duck-billed dinosaur. Bonhams' Natural History auction (via Wired, thanks Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

• [postliteracy_dot_org]

  @10: since we’re dealing with tyrannosaurs, shuoldn’t that be

  “beebaIhavefiftyfiftyfiftycomeoncomeonCretaceousCretaceouseebadabe” ?

• [buddy66]

  What’s the consensus on T-Rex being a scavenger? Those little front arms look right for sorting through trash but not for fighting.

• [Brainspore]

  The best estimate is “somewhere between $2 and $8 million?” I know auctions are hard to predict, but come on- aren’t there appraisers for this sort of thing?

• [rollerskater]

  what a bargain! that t-rex was made by The Lord himself just a few thousand years ago to test the faith of his followers!

• [Lab Monkey]

  I hope another museum etc picks this and a lot of the other fossils up so the public can still view them.

  The idea of it ending up locked away as a trophy in some private collection makes me shudder.

• [demophon]

  Shame on them. Free the dinosaurs! Abolish this disgusting practice!

• [Shannon]

  Not taking a specific position on Buddy66′s conversation starter, but chickens can fight and they don’t even have arms… You don’t need arms to fight.

• [Lt DirtyFreq]

  I wonder if they’ll have the rest of a fossil of what I have. When I was about 10 or 12, my mother & grandma took me to aggot fossil beds. Around the road from there, a man owned a fossil shop. Turns out he his dad found that place (the man telling me the story was an old man… he now has died some time ago.) BUT he let me take home a very special fossil. It wasn’t some dinky fossil. He let me take home a BIG fossil (big for any normal person’s collection). I got the base of a turtle shell where the turtle must of had spikes on his shell. I still have the fossil to this day.

• [Tom Fury]

  While there’s certainly a lot of good humor to be mined in a dinosaur auction, lab monkey has hit on an important point – scientifically important specimins being held in private collections where they are no longer available for scholarly study. While I won’t go as far as to say this practice should be illegal, it is wrong. Hopefully any lots purchased by private individuals will be made available for study and research.

• [gATO]

  Am I the only one who wondered how the hell do they know it was a female?

  And, of course, google is our friend: medulary tissue.

  more info here and here, interview with the scientist who came up with the answer here, and an interesting and funny article about dinosaur sex, not sexing (NY Times, might require reg, sorry)

• [nck wntrhltr]

  I really hope this dinosaur auction is being emcee’d by a 250-words-per-minute champion livestock auctioneer.

• [Takuan]

  eebbadabobabdeeebbabdbeebaIhavefiftyfiftyfiftycomeoncomeonJurrasicJurassiceebadabeedabobadaa….

• [Little John]

  You don’t need arms to fight.

  “Come on, then… Have at you!” – The Black Knight

• [Takuan]

  http://www.agr.state.nc.us/paffairs/aghall/riggs.htm

• [mypalmike]

  Why does he have such funny little front legs?

  [/obscure]

• [undeadmouse]

  …some assembly required… or you can see our list of capable paleontologists who can assemble it for you for a nominal fee.

• [undeadmouse]

  …some assembly required… or you can see our list of capable paleontologists who can assemble it for you for a nominal fee.

• [regularfry]

  @brainspore: Yes. Unfortunately, because these things are sold very rarely, and there are relatively few buyers in the market, each item is unique, and the economy in general is more volatile than usual at the moment (meaning we don’t know how much money the buyers have floating around, or want to expose, for what is essentially a discretionary purchase), it’s extremely hard to predict. It’s not like there’s a T-Rex spot price.