Sotheby’s will auction off the fossilized skeleton of an aerial predator estimated to fetch between $4 million and $6 million, as part of its annual natural history sale in New York on July 26.
The mounted specimen of the pteranodon, a bird-like reptile, was discovered in Kansas in 2002 and nicknamed Horus after the falcon-headed Egyptian god. It has a wingspan of 20 feet, flew over water, and used its long beak for trapping fish. Pteranodons lived about 85 million years ago and have been featured in several movies in the Jurassic Park franchise.
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According to a release, “almost all of the original fossil bones remain essentially unrestored, meaning that artificial filler was not used to replace missing bone sections.”
“To get something of this size with the level of preservation is incredibly rare,” Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s head of science and popular culture, told the Associated Press. “Generally, if you go to a museum and you find a specimen that’s super well preserved, it’s going to be something on the smaller side.”
According to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, pteranodon skeletons are generally incomplete due to the fact that its “bones are hollow and thin-walled; therefore, they were usually crushed flat.”
Sotheby’s is also auctioning off a skeleton of a plesiosaur, which was discovered in the 1990s in Gloucestershire, England. The marine reptile lived about 190 million years ago and is thought to have inspired the legend of the Loch Ness monster due to its long neck, small head, and flippers matching descriptions of the legendary sea creature.
The auction house has nicknamed the 11-foot specimen Nessie and given it an estimated auction price of $600,000 to $800,000.
The two fossil auctions are happening more than 25 years after Sotheby’s launched the natural history sales genre in 1992 with a Tyrannosaurus rex named Sue. It sold for $8.4 million to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. However, sales of dinosaur fossils has been criticized by paleontologists for commercializing rare fossils rather than make them available for public access and further research and study. In 2018, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology requested auction house Aguttes to cancel the sale of a carnivorous dinosaur believed to have lived 154 million years ago.
Source: artnews.com