Nicoletta Lanese is a staff writer for Live Science covering health and medicine, along with an assortment of biology, animal, environment and climate stories. She holds degrees in neuroscience and dance from the University of Florida and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work has appeared in The Scientist Magazine, Science News, The San Jose Mercury News and Mongabay, among other outlets.
A remarkably complete adult Tyrannosaurus rex skull will appear at a public auction in New York City in December and will likely sell for between $15 million and $20 million, according to Sotheby's auction house .
The T. rex fossil was nicknamed Maximus, though it is unknown if the animal was male or female. The skull, which is nearly 6.6 feet tall and weighs more than 200 pounds , was excavated in South Dakota from the famous Hell Creek Formation, a fossil-rich deposit known to contain a trove of unique specimens from the late Cretaceous period . Maximus is estimated to be about 76 million years old, The Associated Press reported .
Maximus isn't the first Hell Creek T. rex to hit the auction block. Sue and Stan, two near-complete skeletons, fetched $8.36 million in 1997 and $31.8 million in 2020, respectively. And on Nov. 30, 2022, a 3,000-pound T. rex skeleton will be up for auction in Hong Kong. For now, that dino is called Shen, but the fossil's eventual buyer will have exclusive naming rights.
Most of Maximus' skeleton was destroyed by erosion, but the surviving skull ranks"among the best and most complete T. rex skulls ever found," Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture, said in a statement. "Unearthed in one of the most concentrated areas for T.
Two punctures in the skull hint that Maximus once engaged in a ferocious battle, potentially with another T. rex, although it's unclear if the fight led to the dinosaur's ultimate demise, Hatton told the AP.
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