３体から成るＴ・レックスの骨格標本、８．２億円で落札　スイス

【チューリヒＡＦＰ＝時事】スイスで１８日、３体のティラノサウルス・レックス（Ｔ・レックス）の骨で構成された標本「トリニティ」が競売に掛けられ、５５０万スイス・フラン（約８億２３００万円）で落札された。（写真は３体のＴ・レックスの骨で構成された標本「トリニティ」の競売の様子。スイス・チューリヒの競売会社「コラー」で。）
　トリニティはその名の通り、２００８～１３年に米モンタナ州とワイオミング州で発見された推定６５００万～６７００万年前の３体の恐竜の骨でできている。体高約３．９メートル、全長１１．６メートル。
　チューリヒの「コラー」で競売に掛けられた。出品者は米国の個人で、落札予想価格は５００万～８００万スイス・フラン（約７億４８００万～１１億９７００万円）とされていた。
　落札者は欧州在住の個人収集家。競売を担当したシリル・コラー氏によると、Ｔレックスの骨格標本が競売で落札されたのは３例目、欧州では初めてとなる。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2023/04/19-16:45）

A composite Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton called Trinity, made up of bones from three different T-Rexes, sold for 5.5 million Swiss francs ($6.1 million) in a rare auction on Tuesday.
Estimated to be 65 to 67 million years old, the skeleton was sold at the Koller auction house in Zurich after being shipped from the United States in nine giant crates.
Trinity fetched a hammer price of 4.8 million Swiss francs, rising to 5.5 million with the buyer's premium added on.
The skeleton was put up for sale by an anonymous US private individual and had been expected to fetch between five and eight million Swiss francs.
It was bought by a private European collector of modern art and dinosaur relics.
Auctioneer Cyril Koller said it was the third T-Rex skeleton ever sold at auction, and the first in Europe.
It was a wonderful auction because we showed Trinity for two-and-a-half weeks in the concert hall in Zurich. And so more than 30,000 visitors came and admired Trinity; a lot of children, he told AFP.
Koller voiced optimism that although the skeleton had been sold to a private buyer, it would remain on public display.
I'm 100 percent sure we will see Trinity in the future somewhere again, he said.
The skeleton measures 3.9-metres high, 11.6 metres long and 2.65 metres wide.
- Experts have bone to pick -
As its name suggests, Trinity is made up of bones from three dinosaurs -- excavated between 2008 and 2013 from the Hell Creek and Lance Creek formations in Montana and Wyoming.
The sites are known for the discoveries of two other significant T-Rex skeletons that have gone to auction.
Sue went under the hammer in 1997 for $8.4 million, before Stan took the world-record hammer price of $31.8 million at Christie's in 2020.
On Trinity, vertebrate palaeontologist Thomas Holtz -- who is against the sale of such specimens -- told AFP it was misleading and inappropriate... to combine multiple real bones from different individuals to create a single skeleton.
Just over half of the bone material in the skeleton comes from the three Tyrannosaurus specimens -- above the 50 percent level needed for experts to consider such a skeleton as high quality.
Holtz, of the University of Maryland, remained sceptical, insisting that Trinity really isn't a 'specimen' so much as it is an art installation.
He also took issue with auctions of significant dinosaur skeletons and other fossils, which have raked in tens of millions of dollars in recent years.
Experts have warned such trade could be harmful to science by putting the specimens in private hands and out of the reach of researchers.
But Christian Link of Koller stressed that 95 percent of known T-Rexes are currently in museums.