Who, and What, Are Bones For?

The Sale

On October 27, 2026, Sotheby’s sold the mounted Nanotyrannus skeleton nicknamed “Jodi” for a hammer price of $40.5 million, before fees. I posted the hammer price seconds after it happened. The comments that followed mostly said the same thing: the specimen belonged in a museum. My replies added the condition I have stated for years. A museum is the right home only if the original bone is not mounted. Paint and plaster on original bone remove the specimen from study just as surely in a museum gallery as in a private room.

My blog, BLIPS: Bones Lost In Plain Sight, conveys my concerns about mounted sauropods, remounts, and the scanning that didn't happen. I include a list of North American sauropod mounts, with specimen numbers and the year of latest (re)mount, and I must here add that there are nearly as many mounted sauropods outside the U.S. as in. I’d wager the vast majority of reasonably complete sauropods have been mounted. But I’m not here to belabor that point, rather I want to share some of my thoughts on the most recent auction sale. Keep in mind this blog sits atop my Shopify commerce engine and is not a robust blog platform, bear with me on any comments made.

Some Auction Observations

The sales price fits a pattern I saw that started with Sue the Tyrannosaurus rex. I attended the Sue auction in 1997, when the Field Museum (and its Corporate Compadres) paid $7.6 million on the hammer, $8.36 million in total. No fossil exceeded that total until Stan in 2020, at $31.8 million including the premium. Apex with premium reached $44.6 million in 2024. Gus, a T. rex, reached $50.1 million with the premium in July 2026. Jodi followed three months later at $47 million with the premium. A juvenile Ceratosaurus sold for $30.5 million including the premium in 2025, against an estimate of $4 to $6 million. Apex had carried an estimate of $4 to $6 million. Gus had carried an estimate of $20 to $30 million. The estimates were far below the results in each case.

It hit me today that potential buyers are bidding on a story. A popular taxon or flashy specimen (or both!) with a nickname that has a backstory and a skeleton that looks quite complete. Alas, these bones are display-ready, not research-ready, which craters their academic value as the "curb appeal" masks important taxonomic characters under coat(s) of paint and plaster. The buyers aren't interested in supraprezygapophysial laminae, of that I'm quite certain :-), but it is that level of multisyllabic terminology that permits paleontologists to identify a taxon to genus and species.

Fifty million dollars is life-changing money in my world (I wouldn't look down upon $5,000 ;-)). For some buyers, it is a few days of interest on their wealth. $50 million to a $20 Billionaire is like me spending $250 on external storage, I give it a few moments pause then make the purchase. The spend is always relative.

I like to measure the dollars against what research funding does. Fossil Crates funds research every year. The amount is (very, very, very) small against these prices, yet the return on each dollar is large for paleo. $1 million directed to research would do more for paleontology than any one mounted skeleton, even one as popular as Sue and Stan. I suspect among paleontologists we see these heady prices and say, "Do you know what the entire discipline could do with that amount of money?!?" However, the buyers might be using these fossils as economic hedges, or maybe they are simply fulfilling a life-long dream, or perhaps simply buying them for bragging rights. I don’t begrudge them buying the specimens, I am disappointed in not having CT scans of them.

The “It belongs in a museum” research conundrum

Several commenters on my social media posts named the American Museum of Natural History as the right home for the Nanotyrannus. The AMNH is an illustrious organization that has permitted me to study sauropods in their repository since 1995. However, that hasn’t been an easy task for their two mounted sauropods.  One in particular: the Barosaurus AMNH 6341 is hidden behind plate glass that is functionally never removed. I have wanted to examine that specimen for three decades. It was described in 2005 by my beloved mentor, Dr. John “Jack” McIntosh. Alas, he was many things, but an expert with a camera or figures he was not. The specimen was partially 3D scanned a few years ago (that story isn’t mine to tell, but it is brilliant!), alas the scans resemble my Atari 2600. Today the specimen cannot functionally be reached for a re-study (don't ask how I know ;-)). When someday we do get to touch it I'll still be sad because the caudal vertebrae were mounted in a permanent plaster base…

Stuart Sumida, president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, told CNN in July 2026, when Gus was headed to auction, that mounting a specimen ends the ability to study it, because study requires the pieces not be obscured with paint and plaster. This was music to my ears. Perhaps SVP will begin asking museums that are (re)mounting bones to CT scan all of them first? They can't continue supporting BLIPS (Bones Lost In Plain Sight), especially when they are holotypes.

The juvenile Ceratosaurus that sold sat on display, fully studyable, for more than twenty years. I know because I lovingly looked at it every time I walked into the Museum of Ancient Life to study their sauropods. It was, to me, so important that, after years of cajoling my theropod friends to study it, I finally asked if I could assemble a TheroSquad to study it. That is saying something because I don't study theropods, but I asked because the specimen was too important to leave alone. By the time I did, a deal had been brokered for its sale. I am 100% certain that if it had been published it wouldn't have been sent to auction. The museum's CEO may have said, "We need funding. We have this one specimen that someone is offering to purchase and the academic community doesn't seem to feel it is worth studying." As a researcher, I assume a specimen on a shelf will remain in the building. I'm not so sure of that in today's climate.

Academics object to the sale of original fossils while sitting on literally tons of unpublished specimens. I am guilty of this myself as I collected a new diplodocid as a graduate student in 1995, which I am only now describing (with the SauroSquad taking point). Why so long? Because other things kept cropping up: new opportunities to explore in the field, in museums, and other projects. I wish I were the only paleontologist that had a massive backlog of "I'm going to..." Even typing this blog gives me a twinge of guilt, I could be working on some sauropods (apologies to the SauroSquad on these side projects :-)).

Here is another interesting piece of info. Almost every named museum dinosaur (Sue, Stan, Big John, I'm not big on names but there are many, many more) was found by a commercial collector and then bought by a museum. Finding a good dinosaur is hard. Buying one costs a museum less than finding one. For example, a recent academic paper found that commercial collectors discovered more T. rex specimens in ~30 years than academic collectors (who can look on public and private lands) found in ~130 years. That's not a good look on us academics! 

Banning fossil sales won't fix the loss of data as that happens when the specimen is mounted. Museums buy, and sometimes mount their own specimens, all without CT scanning or even 3D scanning pre-restoration. The work has to be done before the specimen is mounted, otherwise the museum is buying an inspiration, revenue generating, bragging rights showpiece. None of those things are bad, but transparency to the public would be good in my opinion.

The Trouble with Casts and 3D Scans

Some folks claim Jodi has already been replicated, so nothing is lost. A replica copies the finished bone, not the actual bone. A surface scan has the same limitation: it records the outside of the bone, which means it is scanning restoration. Without a CT scan we don't know what is "real." Coding a surface scan or cast for a phylogenetic analysis leaves question marks when the bone cannot be confirmed. A cast made from a CT scan, before restoration, is different as it records the bone itself.

A predicted side effect of a library of CT scans is that once CT scans exist, the location of the original bone matters less to most researchers. Ninety-nine percent of researchers will work from the digital files and never visit the specimen, which is already how cladistic matrices are used: scores are lifted from other people’s work, and the bones are rarely re-examined. (The reason I travel so much is because I can't stand the thought of not touching the bones myself). A CT scanned privately-owned specimen serves researchers as well as a scanned specimen in a museum. The scan does not justify private ownership, but it does capture information, wherever the specimen ends up. If something is going to “disappear” then I’d prefer we capture the data. Paleontologists use technology every day, I’m shocked we aren’t using it to capture CT data (and I am disappointed people don’t record videos of why they score a character the way they do, but that is for another blog ).

The argument against private ownership, even if CT scanned, is the bones can't be re-searched. Mounted bones can't be re-searched today, or even searched thanks to paint and plaster. Another argument is the public can't see the specimens, however if the bones are mounted in a museum without CT scans then the academics can't study the specimens. It is great the public can see a beautiful sauropod, but it breaks my heart that we can't study it properly. The question always comes down to who, and for what, are the bones for.

A Way Forward

1. Scan before restoration. CT scan every bone, 3D scan every element, photograph each element from six sides, and record video showing what is original. Score the clean bone in a phylogenetic analysis conducted by an expert on the taxon. Complete this work before paint, plaster, or steel. Budget the time into the project before the mount comes down. Scanning costs mostly time, and mounting schedules consume the time first unless the scan is scheduled first.

2. Mount the cast, keep the bone. Build a dynamic cast from the scans. Lay the original bones underneath the cast, visible and reachable. Visitors see which parts are original. Researchers study the bone. The Utah Field House displays a Haplocanthosaurus whose elements are easy to study. The Carnegie Museum’s Camarasaurus lentus, mounted in 1924 with its articulation intact, is still studyable a century later.

3. Declare the sacrifice. When a specimen is mounted as-is for inspiration, display, and revenue, the label should say so. Tell visitors the specimen is not available for research and that its taxonomic value was set aside for display. Give them a QR code to vote if they think that is a good use of the specimen.

4. No remount without a scan plan. A mount comes down once in a generation. No takedown should start without a funded plan for scanning, photography, and scoring, agreed in advance. Invite experts of the taxon to have a summit over the dismounted bones.

5. Sales carry a research condition. A sale should require a CT scan, or a research tax that pays for one, and make the data available. Under such a condition, the buyer would keep the specimen, and the scan data would be made available. The scan is doable with existing equipment. The CT data should be made public, with a 720-day (max) embargo if the specimen is going to be published.

Dr. Mathew Wedel and I observed characters on Haplocanthosaurus delfsi before it was remounted and are presenting those findings at the 2026 SVP meeting. The specimen, now plastered, painted, and remounted, was not CT scanned and no one can verify what we saw. That makes me sad as what we saw was super cool!

The Offer

I am happy to help (and my inbox is open!) any buyer of a major specimen get each bone CT scanned. It would be neat to see how much of the specimen is original versus plaster as my experience with osteographs shows them to be, ahem, optimistic. The catch? The data will have to be made public so we can democratize science by allowing researchers around the world to study the material.

Your personal answer to who, and what, the bones are for strongly influences your stance on this topic. My own desire is that only casts are mounted, that original material is laid out under a mount, and that every bone is CT scanned. As selling fossils is legal, I request that sellers CT the bones before selling. So I ask you: who, and for what, are dinosaur bones for?

BC

PS. I work in a field that will not publish a private specimen, fully CT scanned and 3D scanned, photographed, and run through a phylogenetic analysis, and especially won't allow it to be a holotype, because of the demand for reproducible results. Yet we all publish cladistic scores taken from painted and plaster-laden mounts that no one can truly reproduce, and we permit new taxa to be named from destroyed or lost bones that exist in a single photo or illustration. Let's let a fully scanned specimen be named a technotype. And, while we are at it, let's declare scrappy holotypes, mostly named from fragments in the late 1800s, as paucitypes (from a paucity of data), and start fresh. 

PPS. In more than three decades working with academic and commercial specimens, I have never been invited to work on a private specimen that was purchased and then CT scanned, histologically sectioned, or isotopically analyzed. I am not saying it never happens. I am saying the information does not reach even the grey market on the sauropod side. My experience is that private specimens are kept in beautiful venues, the cleaning crew inevitably breaks something, I get a call to fix it, and the specimen is never actually subjected to academic processes. Most public-land specimens are not either. The offer is a standing invitation to do it differently, once, in public, with the data shared.