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The sale of a specimen named Shen fell apart after a fossil company questioned how much of it was a replica of Stan, a T. rex auctioned off two years ago for a record price.
Christie’s said Sunday that it was withdrawing a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that it had been planning to auction this month in Hong Kong, where it was initially expected to fetch between $15 million and $25 million, after questions were raised about the number of replica bones used in the specimen and the way it was described in marketing materials.
“After consultation with the consignor of the Tyrannosaurus rex scheduled for sale on 30 November in Hong Kong, Christie’s has decided to withdraw the lot,” a spokesman for Christie’s, Edward Lewine, said in a statement. “The consignor has now decided to loan the specimen to a museum for public display.”
Asked about the reason for the withdrawal, Mr. Lewine said the auction house believes the specimen would “benefit from further study.”
The news came 10 days before the scheduled sale.
The T. rex, which the auction house called Shen, had been billed as the first skeleton of its species to appear at auction in Asia. A Christie’s news release touted the specimen as “museum standard” and “a world-class specimen.”
But questions about the fossil were raised in recent weeks, when a lawyer for the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, a fossil company in South Dakota, reached out to Christie’s about similarities between Shen and another T. rex skeleton, named Stan, which Christie’s had sold in 2020 for a record $31.8 million.
Although Stan was auctioned off, the Black Hills Institute retained intellectual property rights on the specimen, allowing it to continue selling painted polyurethane casts of the skeleton, which are currently priced at $120,000 each.
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