T-Rex Skeleton Sells For $6.1-M At Zurich Auction

A composite Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton called Trinity, made up of bones from three different T. rexes, sold for 5.5 million Swiss francs ($6.1 million) in a rare auction, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Jiji Press reported from Zurich.

Photo Insert: The buyer of Trinity, the CHF 5.5 million ($6 million) Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, at Koller Auctions, Zurich was The Phoebus Foundation.

Estimated to be between 65 million and 67 million years old, the skeleton was sold at the Koller auction house in Zurich after being shipped from the United States in nine giant crates.

Trinity fetched a hammer price of 4.8 million Swiss francs, rising to 5.5 million with the buyer’s premium added on.

Trinity is made up of bones from three dinosaurs — excavated between 2008 and 2013 from the Hell Creek and Lance Creek formations in Montana and Wyoming. The sites are known for the discoveries of two other significant T. rex skeletons that have gone to auction.

“Sue” went under the hammer in 1997 for $8.4 million, before “Stan” took the world-record hammer price of $31.8 million at Christie’s in 2020.

On Trinity, vertebrate paleontologist Thomas Holtz — who is against the sale of such specimens — told AFP it was “misleading” and “inappropriate … to combine multiple real bones from different individuals to create a single skeleton.”

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