(Bloomberg) — About 110 million years ago, a dinosaur went hunting. Following ferns along a riverbank, he pinched his nose against the wind and smelled a herbivore ahead. His head shot up. His eyes locked on the target. The dinosaur drew its sickle claws up, ready to deliver a killing blow. But something was wrong. The earth was sinking. His feet were stuck in sand and mud. Limbs falling, the hunter slipped deeper and disappeared under the flow.
It was not the last time this dinosaur disappeared.
Over the centuries, his bones hardened and became fossils. Then, just over a decade ago, a pair of fossil hunters dug up a patch of land in Montana. With brushes, hammers and chisels, the pair carefully unearthed 126 bones, revealing a fossilized Deinonicthe ferocious carnivore that inspired the terrible”Velociraptors” in the novel and film Jurassic Park. The fossil was of serious scientific importance. Endowed with celebrity, it also had considerable monetary value. When the dinosaur, nicknamed 'Hector', was put up for auction in 2022 at Christie's in New York, an anonymous buyer paid $12.4 million—double the auction house's estimate. Shortly thereafter, the specimens were removed and its whereabouts and ownership are unknown.
Hector is one of many dinosaurs to hit the auction block in a recent wave. From a small number of auctions in the 2000s, sales have grown in the last decade or so. Today, there are two or three major sales each year, and the sums involved are gigantic. In the last five years alone, buyers at auctions have paid: $6 million for one Gorgosaurus, close cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex; 8 million dollars for the remains of one Triceratops nicknamed 'Big John'; and $31.8 million for 'Stan', a trust T. rex skeleton Not every auction is a roaring success – selling one T. rex The 2022 skull fell well below its pre-auction estimate, though it still went for a staggering $6.1 million.
In July this year, a new auction record was set: 'Apex', a supported plate Stegosaurusreached 45 million dollars. The sale price was the largest ever for a dinosaur fossil and reflected the fact that Apex was one of the largest and most complete skeletons of its kind ever found. While many buyers are strangers, Apex's new owner was not. of The dinosaur now belongs to Ken Griffin – hedge fund manager, political mega-donor and one of the richest men in the world.
A new asset class
These sales make one thing clear: fossilized dinosaurs are emerging as a new asset class, subject to the whims of the market, exposed to the laws of supply and demand. Like works of art, fine wine and sports memorabilia, fossils can be sold to the highest bidder, regardless of the scientific consequences. Their value is difficult to determine precisely—each fossil is unique, and there is little market data on which to base sales estimates—but the rarity and allure of good fossils has helped drive the price up. wealthy collectors or investors are willing. to pay.
Of course, when it comes to fossils, the scientific mission has long been intertwined with the interests of wealthy benefactors. of Bone wars of the late 19th century it consisted of a rush to find the best fossils among competing hunters supported by wealthy families. In 1899, workers were sent by steel baron Andrew Carnegie to find the world's largest dinosaur properly delivered: Diplodocus carnegii became the centerpiece of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Childs Frick, the son of another industrialist, subsidized the collection of hundreds of thousands of fossils, which he himself studied as a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Recently, billionaire David Koch financed the renovation of dinosaur galleries at the American Museum and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
However, this time is different. For the most part, private buyers of fossils are not building new public collections or subsidizing the work of museums. When a dinosaur is bought for millions, the money goes to the seller and the auction house. It does not contribute to a greater purpose, to discover or learn new things. It is property transferred between private bank accounts. None of them go as far as the academic museums that need funding.
Proponents of fossils as an asset class may argue that there are still many more to be mined – after all, only a few dozen T. rex specimens have ever been discovered – and that a more commercial approach to dinosaur hunting would yield greater results. But commercialization and the influence of market forces also bring risks to the surface.
Paleontologists like myself worry that fossils that are tens of millions of years old need expert conservation skills that cannot be easily replicated in a private collection, for example. Furthermore, we are concerned that fossils owned by private collectors will no longer be readily accessible for scientific research.
This is important. When a paleontologist proposes a theory about a dinosaur—the hypothetical hunting scene I describe at the beginning of this piece, for example—it is based on detailed analysis of the fossils and the area in which they were discovered. In the same way that forensic detectives piece together a crime scene from tiny fibers and fragments of evidence, paleontologists can infer clues about a dinosaur's life, age, eating habits, environment, and death, all from detailed inspection. of the current fossil record. CAT scans, digital models and microscopic examination of wafer-thin slices of bone can help us infer how smart or how old a dinosaur was. Small chemical samples of the teeth can infer its diet and body temperature as well.
Fossils inspire
It is also important to the scientific debate that access to these fossils is continuous. Scientists must look at and critique the evidence for themselves. That's why science is not a collection of facts to be memorized, but an open inquiry, where the constant framing and testing of ideas helps us better understand how the world works. When a fossil disappears into a private collection, it is potentially lost for a generation or more. There can be no further questions.
As a home for fossils, museums also cater to non-scientists. Fossils inspire. They capture the imagination of people from all walks of life, of all ages. When I was a teenager, I was hit by 'Sue', a T. rex exhibited at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Sue was not collected by museum scientists; she was bought at auction for 8.4 million dollars in 1997. The museum was able to afford the high price only with the support of a handful of sponsors. Millions of people have now seen Sue. Some, like me, became paleontologists. But many others who experienced a real dinosaur up close and personal surely came away pondering the mysteries of evolution and extinction and our place in the universe.
In the mirror, the costly sale of Sue the T. rex perhaps lit the fuse in today's fossil market mania. Since then, the more valuable dinosaurs have become, the more science competes with the distorting effects of money. While potentially extinct fossils in private collections are a major concern, the lure of large sums of money for fossil finds is at least as important to those most interested in scientific discovery. Already some former farmers and ranchers have allowed academic paleontologists to dig on their land pro bono they're looking for a piece of the multi-million dollar stake. It is likely inevitable that a group of cowboy fossil hunters will end up destroying important scientific context in their insatiable search for valuable dinosaur bones. It is possible that a more commercial fossil hunt will focus on the pieces that will fetch the most at auction, even if other, more scientifically important bones are left buried or simply thrown away.
All of this creates a frustrating situation for paleontologists, educators, and the public alike, as market forces threaten to encroach on valuable scientific territory. While some countries don't allow private dinosaur hunting – there are bans in China and Mongolia, for example – there isn't much in the way of regulation that could withstand the onslaught of the US market, where most fossils sold at auction are discovered. This is reasonable. Rules prohibiting the possession or collection of fossils would be counterproductive. In addition to hunting dinosaurs in museums, amateur fossil hunting, for shark teeth, corals and other fossilized remains, is a valuable experience for proto-scientists. It certainly was for me. Curbing the free market without curbing the curiosity of an enthusiastic generation of paleontologists would be mission impossible. But leaving the field unregulated and open to the full effect of the market is also potentially harmful.
Hedge fund owners
And yet, for me, paleontology remains an exercise in positivity. Searching the planet for hidden bones from a hundred million years ago is a painstaking and often futile process. The bullish view of recent sales is that some specimens may end up on public display. Stan, T. rex will be exhibited in one The new Abu Dhabi Museum of Natural Historyscheduled to open in 2025. Ken Griffin has said he is looking to loan Apex to an American institution. There is a complexity in these results as well. If a dinosaur is owned by a private individual and loaned to a museum, can it be sold again? Will it be borrowed for a short period or permanently? Will scientists be given access?
When Hector Deinonic sold to an unidentified buyer in 2022, paleontologists worried the fossil would be lost to science altogether. But slowly, as time passed, details of Hector's whereabouts began to emerge once more. In online forums and social media, rumors stated that a Deinonic was exhibited in a science museum in Hong Kong. The photos confirmed that the skeleton was Hector. Layer by layer, more information surfaced. A caption on a photo on the website of the referenced museum Vegasoul Capital Management — a Hong Kong-based hedge fund and quantitative trading firm. A press release mentioned a Vegasoul executive in attendance at an exhibition opening with Hector. Another executive who answered a call at the hedge fund's office confirmed Vegasoul was the owner. What about the other details? Was the dinosaur an investment? Under what conditions would Vegasoul sell the fossil again? The hedge fund executive declined to comment, burying Hector the Deinonic under the layers of mystery once again.
Steve Brusatte is Professor of Paleontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh, New York Times bestselling author of Pop Science The rise and fall of the dinosaursand paleontology consultant for the Jurassic World film series