Bidders will need a dino-sized bank account to land this fossil.
A Tyrannosaurus rex skull is going up for sale in New York next month – and it could fetch $15-20 million on the auction block, officials said Tuesday.
Auction house Sotheby’s estimated the jaw-dropping price tag for the roughly 76 million year-old skull, which is 6.5-feet long and weighs 200 pounds, officials said.
“When you think about it, more people can fit a skull in their home than people who could fit a full dinosaur,” said Sotheby rep Cassandra Hatton, calling it “the ultimate trophy” to place in one’s home.
The fossil, nicknamed Maximus, is being offered by an anonymous private owner.
It was dug up in Harding County, South Dakota – “the world capital for T. rexes,” according to Hatton, the auction house’s head of science and popular culture.
The Cretaceous, or Mesozoic Era, fossil — recovered in the same area where other T. rex skeletons were found – saw most of its skeleton eroded over eons but it still has numerous teeth and two large puncture holes that is likely evidence of a “Jurassic World” level fight with another prehistoric predator.
“We don’t know that this is what caused the death of this animal, but we can tell that it did have a major battle during its lifetime,” Hatton said.
There are fewer than 12 skulls of this quality and completeness on display in museum collections, according to the auction house.
Without the work of the field paleontologists who recovered the skull on private land, the skull may have “eroded away and been lost to science forever,” said Henry Galiano, Sotheby’s consultant on natural history.
“This T. rex fossil is an extraordinary discovery,” Galiano said in a statement provided to The Post. “Unearthed in one of the most concentrated areas for T rex remains, the skull retained much of its original shape and surface characteristics with even the smallest and most delicate bones intact, with an extremely high degree of scientific integrity.”
The Hell Creek Formation was also the site where T. rex fossil “Sue” — the first dinosaur ever sold at auction, which fetched $8.3 million at a 1997 Sotheby’s sale, according to Sotheby’s. “Stan” sold for $31.8 million in 2020, the auction house said.
Maximus’ sale comes several months after Sotheby’s auctioned off a Gorgosaurus skeleton for the first time – raking in $6.1 million from an unknown buyer. The July auction in New York City rankled some scientists who said the specimen was too rare to be kept in private hands.
One expert told the New York Times after the sale that only about half of the partial or skeletal T. rex fossils are available for public viewing and research while the remainder are in private ownership.
With Post wires