The Gorgosaurus
(Picture: AP)A rare ancient dinosaur has been sold at auction in the US to an unknown buyer for just over $6m (£5m).
The fossil, a Gorgosaurus - a distant relative of the infamous Tyrannosaurus rex - was discovered in 2018, and was offered for sale at Sotheby’s in New York.
The buyer will now have the opportunity to bestow a nickname on the one-time predator.
The sale is the second-ever of a fossilised dinosaur skeleton at the auction house, after the first, a T-rex nicknamed Sue, was sold to Chicago’s Field Museum in 1997.
The Gorgosaurus, the only specimen of its kind offered for private sale, was expected to attract bids of up to $8m (£6.54m).
The fossil was discovered in 2018 in Montana, measures nearly 10 feet tall and 22 feet long.
The Gorgosaurus roamed the Earth about 77 million years ago. Similar to a T-rex, it had a large head, a mouth full of curved serrated teeth, and small two-fingered front limbs.
While smaller than a T-rex, it was faster and had a stronger bite, according to Sotheby’s, for "cutting into thick skin and penetrating deep into the flesh of their prey”.
The specimen was the star lot in a natural history auction. Other artefacts sold at the auction include a T-rex’s tooth, a Triceratops skull, and a sabre-tooth tiger skull.
The record amount fetched by dinosaur fossils is $31.8 million for a T-rex sold by Christie’s in 2020, the highest price ever paid at auction for a fossil.
However, some scientists have raised concerns that the artefacts are being sold to private buyers, as opposed to being displayed for public knowledge and understanding.
“In my own opinion, there are only cons," said David Polly, a professor at Indiana University Bloomington, speaking to CNN.
“While certainly there is no law in the US that supports this for fossils that come off private land, it’s easy for me as a scientist to argue that that fossil is important to all of us, and really ought to be going into a public repository where it can be studied -- where the public at large can learn from it and enjoy it.”
