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The Conversation
The Conversation
Jessica M. Theodor, Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary

Why a 110-million-year-old raptor skeleton should never have been sold at auction for over US$12M

A skeleton of an Allosaurus on display at Drouot auction house in Paris, in October 2020. It sold for three million euros, double the asking price. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

In mid-May, Christie’s auction house in New York sold a raptor skeleton (Deinonychus) for US$12.4 million. This represents a failure to protect and share our natural history with everyone.

We are paleontologists and represent the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, a group of 2,000 scientists, students and museum professionals around the world. We are promoting awareness of the problems that high-profile auctions of vertebrate fossils cause, and why we think they shouldn’t happen.

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