Christie’s has canceled the upcoming auction of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in Hong Kong, the auction house confirmed to Agence France-Presse on Monday, days before the skeleton was scheduled to go under the hammer.
The termination occurred The New York Times reported on Sunday that an American fossil business has cast doubt on the authenticity of certain pieces of the “Shen” skeleton.
Christie’s informed AFP in a statement that Shen, a 3,100-pound skeleton, was pulled from its fall auctions week, which begins on Friday in Hong Kong.
“The donor has opted to lend the item to a museum for public exhibition,” the document stated.
Shen, a 15-foot-tall, 39-foot-long fossil discovered in Montana, is believed to be an adult man who lived around 67 million years ago.
Its auction would have followed Christie’s 2020 sale of another T. rex skeleton, “Stan,” for $31.8 million.
According to The Field Museum in Chicago, one of the greatest natural history institutions in the United States, it is exceedingly unusual to find whole dinosaur bones.
On October 28, 2022, visitors examine the bones of a Tyrannosaurus Rex called Shen in the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall in Singapore. The skeleton was displayed for three days prior to its shipment to Hong Kong for sale. Then Chih Wey/Xinhua via Getty Images
The majority of on-display frames employ bone casts to build the skeleton. The Field Museum believes that a T. rex contains 380 bones.
According to Christie’s, around 80 of Shen’s bones were authentic.
Peter Larson, the head of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in the United States, stated to The New York Times that portions of Shen resembled Stan.
Even after its sale in 2020, the Black Hills Institute retains the intellectual property rights to Stan and sells reproductions of this skeleton.
Larson told the newspaper that it appeared to him that Shen’s owner — who Christie’s did not identify — utilized replica Stan bones to finish the skeleton.
Edward Lewine, spokesperson for Christie’s, told the newspaper that the auction company feels Shen “might profit from more research.”
In recent years, sales of such bones have generated tens of millions of dollars, but experts have deemed the trade damaging to science since the auctions might place them in private hands and out of reach of scientists.