Posted on 07/29/2007 9:03:12 AM PDT by blam
Dinosaur bones: the latest status symbol
By Philip Sherwell, Sunday Telegraph in Hulett, Wyoming, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 4:29pm BST 29/07/2007
The bidding war between the two Hollywood stars was intense as the price soared for the 67 million-year-old dinosaur skull.
The Black Hills Institute of Geological Research has unearthed a jumble of dinosaur remains
Only when it reached $276,000 did Leonardo DiCaprio blink - and Nicolas Cage walked away from the Beverley Hills auction with a ferocious-looking addition to his fossil collection.
As this recent battle of the celebrities for the head of a tyrannosauras bataar — the Asian cousin of T-rex — proved, dinosaur bones are emerging as the new, collectible must-haves for the multi-millionaires of Hollywood, Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
DiCaprio may have lost out last time, but he will have further chances to bid for a dinosaur of his own later this year when both IM Chait, the same Beverley Hills auctioneer, and Bonhams & Butterfields put a mosasaurus on the block.
The skeletons of the two 20 ft long, 65 million-year-old aquatic predators are expected to fetch between $150,000 and $400,000.
“Dinosaur bones and all sorts of fossils are increasingly hot right now. Hollywood heavy-hitters and the mega-rich types from the Middle East love this stuff,” said Josh Chait, operations director of the family firm.
“When you already have a Warhol or a Monet on the wall, you tend to want a change from traditional artwork and people are turning to natural history for that.”
Ron Howard, the Oscar-winning director of a string of films including A Beautiful Mind, is said to be a dinosaur aficionado while Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft chief and amateur paleontologist, is another high profile collector.
Cage had previously dipped into the market with purchases of trilobites, creatures that evolved in the seas 570 million years ago, long before dinosaurs ruled the earth.
IM Chait and Bonhams, which are catering to the demand for fossils as an exciting and unusual new investment, say their client lists include a slew of Hollywood A-listers, captains of industry, moguls and even royalty.
Dino-mania is also sweeping the online bidding site eBay, where buyers can purchase everything from prehistoric teeth to skeletons. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, the price of a triceratops skull in good condition has soared 10-fold over the last decade to $250,000.
And American museums, which remain overwhelmingly the biggest buyers of dinosaur bones, have also joined the frenzy as they strengthen their natural history displays - partly to counter the creationist claims, pushed as an alternative to the theory of evolution by some on the religious Right.
The benefit of the booming trade in prehistoric fossils is being felt far away from the prestigious museums or the mansions of Los Angeles and the elegant townhouses of uptown Manhattan where the bones eventually end up.
Dino-mania is also sweeping eBay
In blistering summer heat last week, diggers from the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, a leading commercial fossil company, painstakingly scraped away with brushes, picks and knives at a jumble of dinosaur remains.
This prehistoric motherlode is emerging from the banks of a grassy ridge covered by pines and scrub oaks in the Bear Lodge Mountains, a beautiful and remote corner of north-eastern Wyoming.
In just one morning, they uncovered everything from tiny fragments of crocodile teeth to a huge chunk of humerus front leg bone from a 145 million-year-old brachiosaurus, the long-necked behemoth best known to most non-paleontologists as the beast that sneezed on the girl, Lex, in Jurassic Park.
The sheep-grazing pasture belongs to 70-year-old Elaine Waugh and her husband Leslie, 78. “As a young girl I remember that there were bones just lying around on the ground but back then we never imagined that they were worth money,” recalled Mrs Waugh as she surveyed the dig.
But when the couple retired, they decided to get serious about the bones and contacted Pete Larson, who founded the Black Hills Institute in 1974.
The company leases the land for $1,000 a month but the Waughs will also receive a percentage of all future sales of bones, or of replicas cast from the fossils discovered here.
The Waughs’ hope that “there’s money in the bones in them thar hills” is not unreasonable. Mr Larson, who was part of the team that discovered Sue the T-rex, the world’s most expensive dinosaur when it was sold to a Chicago museum for $8.3 million, expects a camerasaurus discovered here - and named Elaine after Mrs Waugh - to fetch at least $1 million.
“When we started digging, we realised this was a giant bed of bones,” said Mr Larson, 55, his skin a deep brown from more than three decades on digs.
“We love fossils and our sales support our hobby. Anybody who goes into palaeontology is driven by the curiosity to find out about life on our planet.”
He said the market had boomed in recent years.
“We’re very busy now catering mainly to museums, but also to private individuals. There has been a renaissance in interest in dinosaurs, and of course Jurassic Park helped kick-start all that.”
To the east of the Black Hills, on the prairie that cuts across the central US from Canada to Mexico, the ranchers and farmers of the Great Plains have endured a debilitating seven-year drought.
For the likes of Bucky Derflinger, harvesting dinosaur bones has provided an alternative and lucrative new crop.
The 29-year-old from the remote farming community of Faith, South Dakota, has so far discovered two T-rexes on his father’s land and a slew of remains of duck-billed dinosaurs.
The first T-rex was sold to an Indiana museum for an undisclosed seven-figure sum, with the proceeds split between Mr Derflinger, his father and the Black Hills institute which excavated the skeleton.
Mr Derflinger used his share of the money to buy a 4,000-acre cattle ranch where he lives with his wife Marti Jo, 28, and daughter Jami, 10.
A life-size cast of the dinosaur's skull adorns their hallway and downstairs he has a collection of bones he has picked up over the years.
“This drought has been a real killer. You don’t get rich ranching in America anymore and I’d never have been able to afford this place without the dinosaurs,” said Mr Derflinger, a part-time rodeo rider who still spends several weeks a year prospecting for bones.
“Dinosaurs sure have been good to me. But even if people weren’t willing to pay for them, I’d be out here collecting. They’re just so cool and neat.”
GGG Ping.
I’m more concerned about fake bones bought by museums...
The Black Hills Institute of Geological Research also sells museum quality replicas of these fossils.
Well, rumors sure flew about Mark Whalberg after Boogie Nights. :o)
/h
While seeming to favor fossils, Anna Nicole Smith was often presented with old organs.
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I have some 7,000 year old real wood for sale.
I’m glad BHIGR got the dig.
What was done to them by the federal government over Sue was a real crime.
I must be in the Jet Set! I have boxes of dinosaur bones. (No Tyrannosaur skulls, unfortunately).
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