The largest stegosaurus fossil ever found heads to auction
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
There's more time between the last Stegosaurus and the first T-Rex then there is between the last T-Rex and us right now. A little off topic, but it's kind of mind-blowing to think of just how long the dinosaurs were around.
what an opener
my money's on it was relocated
Anyway as others said, sad to see this being sold, but with how pure research budgets have been and probably will be cut, I guess they have no choice.
Jurassic Park.
Jurassic Park introduced everyone to velociraptors. But stegosaurs and T-Rex were always battling it out in kids art classes
It introduced everyone to Deinonychus and to the (incorrect) name Velociraptor.
I think it can be mostly explained by the first Jurassic Park movie.
Land Before Time included most of those in the “main cast” but I think it was following the trend, not setting it.
Velociraptor (well, the fake Deinonychus-like “velociraptor antirrhopus” or whatever from the book/movie) and definitely Dilophosaurus got a huge popularity boost from Jurassic Park.
Brontosaurus doesn't exist any more; apparently it was some kind of mistake due to incomplete knowledge I think, or maybe some kind of mix-up. Apatosaurus I think is the current king of that type of long-necked huge plant-eating sauropod.
Really? I can’t see anything about this in the wiki?
>Brontosaurus is a genus in the subfamily Apatosaurinae, which includes only it and Apatosaurus, which are distinguished by their firm builds and thick necks. Although Apatosaurinae was named in 1929, the group was not used validly until an extensive 2015 paper, which found Brontosaurus to be valid. However, the status of Brontosaurus is still uncertain, with some paleontologists still considering it a synonym of Apatosaurus.
And:
>Almost all 20th-century paleontologists agreed with Riggs that all Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus species should be classified in a single genus. According to the rules of the ICZN, which governs the scientific names of animals, the name Apatosaurus, having been published first, had priority; Brontosaurus was considered a junior synonym and was therefore discarded from formal use.
The seller is described as a commercial paleontologist, so it's not like this is a sad outcome for him and his team that they arrived at of necessity. They set out to find an expensive fossil and succeeded.
The representative from Sotheby's even says that they were involved from day 1:
> “This is the first time a specimen has been auctioned where we’ve been working together from the time it was excavated,” she said. “This is the most transparent sale of a dinosaur to have ever occurred.”
But a lot of fossils wouldn’t see the light of day unless there was a commercial market. I have heard stories on fossil forums about countries where there are restrictions and quarries will just crush them along with all the other rock.
In my country the vast majority of palaeontology is done by amateurs. There is only so much public funding but loads of amateurs. If private ownership was banned then academic research would go to near zero.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot,_shovel,_and_shut_up
I would argue that there are very much a finite amount of fossils. esspecialy of larger animals. fossilization is a rare event.
Indeed, but it has been happening for hundreds of millions of years for billions of individual organisms, and we haven't excavated even a fraction of a percent of their possible locations.
Previously people building a road would just shut their mouths and pave over it. Now they have an incentive to pause the job and extract it.