WHEN a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton called "Sue" was auctioned for $8.4 million three years ago, fossils had the same kudos as works of art. But an American palaeontologist suggests that such rock star price tags are unlikely to be seen again. He and his team have found five new T. rex skeletons in one season and, if they are as common as he suspects, this could put an end to the price wars that have seen museums and collectors bid millions for skeletons of the beasts.
"They are basically a dime a dozen," says Jack Horner, curator of palaeontology at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. During three months of field work this summer, Horner and his team found five new T. rex fossils in around 15 square kilometres of Montana. Earlier fossil hunters had "pretty well worked over" the area but missed the specimens, Horner told New Scientist.
The rarity and mystique of T. rex fuelled the bidding for "Sue" at Sotheby's three years ago (New Scientist, 11 October 1997, p 5). The most complete T. rex skeleton known, that fossil is now on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. Since that auction, palaeontologists have worried that soaring prices would put the world's best fossils in the hands of rich collectors and encourage hasty, and damaging, excavations by profiteers.
Those fears were reinforced early this year when another T. rex, called "Mr. Z. rex", was put up for sale by the Internet sites millionaire.com and Lycos. No deal has yet been announced, but a spokes-man for millionaire.com says the final negotiations on the sale will be completed sometime in December.
But Horner says his discovery of five new skeletons in one season suggests "that T. rex was a lot more common than we thought". He doubts that the team just got lucky. The researchers deliberately looked for T. rex and discovered the fossils at separate sites. Also, the ages of the five fossils spanned some 1.5 million years, ruling out any suggestion that they had stumbled upon a herd of the beasts.
Horner believes that systematic searches could uncover enough T. rex skeletons for most large museums to have their own. There are only some 30 to 40 T. rex skeletons in museum collections around the world, and most are less than half complete. His field crew have recovered one incomplete T. rex, and will return for the other four skeletons next year.
Palaeontologists hope the abundance of T. rex specimens will keep fossil prices from spiralling out of the reach of scientists, who have to work within tight budgets. "I hope it's going to make these things worth a lot less on the marketplace for fossils than they have been," says Tom Holtz, a tyrannosaur specialist at the University of Maryland in College Park.
But he also worries that a glut of fossils could produce an unwelcome side effect. Excavators may be more likely to search for fossils to keep or sell privately, arguing that there are now enough specimens to go around to satisfy both scientists and dealers.
Author: Jeff Hecht
New Scientist issue: 14th October 2000
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