It is 150 million years old and can stand in your living room for half a million dollars

Another week, another dinosaur for sale… that’s how we sum it up The increasingly popular phenomenon of selling recovered dinosaur skeletons to individuals. In 2020, someone paid $30 million for a nearly complete skeleton of a dinosaur named Stan. At the end of last year, the remains of the largest Triceratops known as Big John sold for 6.6 million euros, in May this year it sold for $12.4 million. A skeleton named Hector, at the end of July, an unknown buyer bought a 77 million-year-old skeleton of a gorgosaurus for $6 million, and now Zephyr iguanodon has joined them, which will certainly be very popular, because its price is definitely more affordable.

And although the Zephyr is not as massive as its fellow famous people sold at these auctions, we are still talking about a very unique skeleton, because 150 million years. The remains of this iguanodon were discovered in 2019 at a private site in Colorado during the construction of a road, and then restored by Italian paleontologists – on October 20 they will be auctioned in Paris, where experts estimate they will be up to half the price. Million dollars.

As Alexandre Gikello of Gikello Auctions said, it is 1.3 meters high and 3 meters long Zephyr dinosaur is the perfect decoration for your living roomBut not everyone shares this enthusiasm.

anxiously Scientists note the trend of decorating private homes for valuable exhibitionsBecause, as paleontologist Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh commented in a statement to Business Insider, the skeletons’ place is in the museum. except this Museums often don’t have the funds to buy at auctionsTherefore, instead of our natural heritage being available to everyone, it ends up in private collections and is often lost forever.

Members of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) also expressed their views after Stan’s auction in October, noting that Such valuable samples falling into private hands are likely to be missing to scienceBecause even if scientists had access to it, no one would be able to guarantee it in the future, and doing the necessary research in such conditions is also usually impossible. Are these arguments enough to convince the rich and famous? We sincerely doubt…