The camptosaurus skeleton known as Barry, remarkably preserved from the Jurassic period and dating to roughly 150 million years ago, is slated for auction in Paris. This development has been reported by Reuters.
The fossil was unearthed in Wyoming, United States, during the 1990s and underwent restoration in 2000 under the direction of paleontologist Barry James, who assigned the dinosaur its name. Further conservation work was completed by Zoic, an Italian laboratory that acquired Barry last year.
Paris auction house Hotel Drouot, where the sale will take place in October, described the specimen as exceptionally well preserved. Alexandre Guichello, a representative of the house, emphasized the rarity of such finds and noted that the skull itself is about 90 percent complete, with the remainder of the skeleton estimated at roughly 80 percent complete. Dinosaurs rarely appear on the art market, with only a handful of pieces sold globally each year, Guichello added.
Before the auction, the public will have the opportunity to view the skeleton in mid-October. The price tag is anticipated to be around 1.28 million dollars.
In related paleontological news, researchers from the University of Bath in the United Kingdom reported the discovery of a new, small herbivorous dinosaur species on the Isle of Wight in southern England. The find supports a hypothesis that Europe once harbored its own lineage of small lizards, distinct from their relatives in Asia and North America, offering intriguing clues about prehistoric biodiversity in the region.
Additionally, scientists have speculated about the existence of a large predatory creature that roamed Earth around 40 million years before the first dinosaurs appeared in the fossil record, a discovery discussed by researchers tracing early life on land in Brazil. [Reuters attribution]