The rich and famous frequently change the medium they use to make a statement. If today it is a collection of Impressionist masters, tomorrow it
can be a large family of adopted children collected from different cultures. Displaying a definite taste for the bizarre, moneyed collectors are now
flocking fossil auctions like never before.
In April, a 65-million-year-old Triceratops skeleton went under the hammer in Paris, and sold for a hard-to-imagine us $789,343. In March, a prehistoric Siberian mammoth fetched a whopping us $394,662
in New York. The people who buy them are usually Hollywood A-listers, captains of industry and royalty. Hollywood actors Leonardo DiCaprio and
Nicholas Cage even locked horns in a bidding war to obtain the head of a Tyrannosaurus bataar (the Asian cousin of T rex). Christie's, Sothebys,
Bonhams, all major auction houses are doing brisk business with old bones.
This is putting many museums out of business as state funding is limited. Natural History Museum, London says its annual budget for buying all its
science specimens is us $59,200.
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