Triceratops Fails to Reach its Reserve Price at Auction

Despite a great deal of interest from within France and overseas the almost complete Triceratops fossil put up for auction in Paris yesterday failed to sell.

A spokesperson for Christie’s, the auction house responsible for the sale of the natural history museum items commented: “I don’t understand what happened, five hundred thousand euros (the reserve price) is a gift.  It should have sold for at least one million euros”.

Triceratops Fossil

The bidding opened at 420,000 euros and when it closed the price had moved up to 485,000 euros but this was not enough to meet the seller’s reserve.

Failing to meet the owner’s reserve price means that the Triceratops has not been sold, however, Christie’s have announced that the bidding will remain open by telephone for the next two weeks.

A Triceratops Fossil on Display

Triceratops Fossil on Display

A cast of a Triceratops skeleton on display at the Naturmuseum Senckenberg (Natural History Museum – Frankfurt). On the left a wall mounted example of a Plateosaurus can be seen.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Everything Dinosaur sells a wide range of horned dinosaur figures such as those in the Beasts of the Mesozoic model range: Beasts of the Mesozoic Articulated Dinosaur Figures.

Smilodon Skull Material

Buyers were less reticent when it came to bidding for some of the other objects that went under the hammer yesterday (Wednesday April 16th).  The Sabre-toothed cat skull, estimated to sell for around 65,000 euros eventually went for 183,000 euros.

Smilodon Skull and Jaws

Smilodon skull

Big-toothed predator.  Smilodon skull and jaws.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

To see a scale model of a Sabre-toothed cat (Smilodon): Models of Prehistoric Mammals.

Keen Interest from Bidders

Despite the Triceratops receiving the highest bid of the day, it seems that some of the other exhibits such as the Sabre-toothed cat skull were more popular.   Although, exceedingly rare such skull material is relatively common when compared to the finds of complete Triceratops specimens.  Sites such as the La Brea tar pits have yielded the remains of many hundreds of Smilodons whilst the apparent like of large herding behaviour of Triceratops has led to finding of very few articulated and associated specimens of this Late Cretaceous dinosaur.