A 66-million-year-old skeleton of a young triceratops sold yesterday for $5.5m on Joopiter, the auction platform of the musician Pharrell Williams. This is a record price for a dinosaur sold via an online only sale. The buyer's identity is undisclosed.
“Trey”, which dates to the Late Cretaceous period, was excavated from the Lance Formation near Lusk, Wyoming, in 1993—the same year Jurassic Park was released—during the so-called “Bone Rush” of the 1990s. It was found by Lee Campbell in partnership with Allen Graffham of Geological Enterprises.
The largely complete skeleton was then shipped to Germany for restoration and mounting before returning to the US in 1995 to take centre stage at the opening of the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. It remained on public display for almost three decades.
Estimated between $4.5m to $5.5m, Trey was sold with documentation including the original fossil lease agreement with the landowner, photographs of Campbell and Graffham during the dig, and other original photographs of excavation at the Lusk lease from Graffham’s estate.
The skeleton, which measures 5.3 metres long and 2.2 metres high, is from a sub-adult or young adult triceratops which was still growing, hence “the epoccipital bones that ornament the top of the frill are not present or fused yet”, according to the palaeontologist Frédéric Lacombat.
The skeleton consists of more than 70% original fossil material—smaller bones, such as ribs, which are more vulnerable to being lost, eroded or scavenged, are absent. Trey has been examined by the renowned palaeontologist Andre LuJan, the president of the Association of Applied Paleontological Science, who has previously called for a higher bar for documentation of excavated dinosaurs coming to market, particularly in light of the high prices fetched by largely complete skeletons this decade.
The skeleton is that of a sub- or young adult, judging by the frill which is not yet fully developed
Courtesy of Joopiter
Speaking to the New York Times last year, LuJan said the record $44.6m sale of “Apex”, a stegosaurus offered at Sotheby’s New York in 2024, had led to a steep rise in leases for prime dinosaur-hunting land, much to the detriment of academic research. “Landowners see the market rise and think, ‘Oh, we’re not charging enough for our leases,’” LuJan told the NYT. “But they don’t understand the volatility of the market.”
LuJan was speaking in advance of the sale of a Ceratosaurus skeleton at Sotheby’s last July, which sold for $30.5m, many times the $4m to $6m estimate. Yet more evidence that, as LuJan says, dinosaurs are becoming big business: in 2020, Christie’s sold Stan the T Rex for $31.8m in 2020, also far above the $6m to $8m estimate. Stan is now in the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi. Apex, estimated at $4m to $6m, was bought by the American billionaire Ken Griffin and is now on loan to the American Museum of Nattural History in New York.
If those prices are out of your range, perhaps look to Joopiter's spin-off drop of Trey merchandise in collaboration with the cultural platform Co-Museum. A fibreglass replica of Trey's skull could be yours for $695. Or, a Trey tote bag for $100—because what the world needs now is another tote bag.