One of the world’s most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons is up for sale. STAN the T. rex, named after the paleontologist who first discovered his bones, walked the Earth some 67 million years ago. Now his skeleton will be displayed at Christie’s in New York prior to auction on October 6, with an estimate of $6 million to $8 million.
… For the past two decades, STAN has been studied at the Black Hills Institute in South Dakota, and paleontologists have produced dozens of papers and studies as a result. Standing 13 feet high and 40 feet long, including its tail, STAN is made up of 188 bones, making it one of the largest and most complete T. rex skeletons in the world.
… The first of its bones was found in the Hell Creek Formation that spans parts of Montana, North and South Dakota and Wyoming in 1987 by Stan Sacrison, an amateur paleontologist. It took more than 30,000 hours of manual labor to excavate and restore the skeleton. Researchers have since found that STAN survived a broken neck during his lifetime, after which two of his vertebrae fused together. There are also signs of puncture wounds in his skull and one rib that may have been caused by another T. rex.
Photo: Getty images