Dinosaurs and Billionaires - Summer 2025

A mounted dinosaur skeleton stands in a barren landscape with the sun setting in the distance.

A unique juvenile Ceratosaurus sold for $30.5 million at Sotheby's on July 16. Photo: Matthew Sherman.

Vivienne Chow

August 5, 2025

Dinosaurs are dominating this summer’s headlines. The Hollywood blockbuster Jurassic World Rebirth is powering through the global box office with $718.4 million earned worldwide as of Sunday, while July’s sale of a juvenile Ceratosaurus fossil at Sotheby’s New York has also been in the news.

The megafauna fossil, dating to 154 million to 159 million years ago, stood just over 6 feet tall and nearly 11 feet long, with 139 original bone elements. It sold for a mega price of $30.5 million—five times its presale high estimate of $6 million. (Sale prices include fees, estimates do not.) Although it didn’t surpass last year’s record $44.6 million sale of Apex—the most complete Stegosaurus skeleton ever found, bought by hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin—there is no denying that prehistoric fossils are increasingly fetching historic prices.

Yet the passion for collecting dinosaur bones is nothing new. It can be traced to ancient times when the Roman emperor Augustus, who ruled from 27 B.C.E. to 14 C.E., was said to have amassed a collection of massive bones described by Suetonius as belonging to “giants.” But the term “dinosauria,” meaning “terrible lizard,” did not exist until 1842 when it was introduced by British scientist Richard Owen.

While fossil collecting is regaining popularity among contemporary collectors, it’s also raising ethical concerns about access, provenance, and the privatization of science, with experts calling for greater regulation.

Who’s Buying Dinosaur Bones Now?

Buyers range from private collectors to institutions, and even state entities. For instance, Abu Dhabi bought Stan, a complete T-Rex fossil, at Christie’s in 2020 for a then-record $31.8 million. It will go on view in the UAE capital’s new Natural History Museum, which opens in December 2025 in the city’s Saadiyat Cultural District.

Celebrities have also caught fossil fever. Hollywood heavyweights such as Nicolas Cage, Leonardo di Caprio, and Russell Crowe have also purchased dinosaur remains.

“You have collectors all over the world: America, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America,” said Nicolai Frahm in a 2022 interview. A London-based art advisor and collector, Frahm was behind the 2020 sale of Stan and the consignor of a 12.4 million raptor skeleton that sold in 2022. “It’s quite simple,” he added. “We all grew up with dinosaurs, and we all love them.”

Apex owner Griffin agrees. “I’ve always loved dinosaurs,” he said in a recent interview with Bloomberg, adding that he had a stuffed dinosaur when he was a child.”I’ve always been fascinated by this moment in the history of our planet,” he added. “To make sure that Apex, which was one of the greatest fossils ever found, stayed here in America to inspire generations of children about science, was just an opportunity I could not pass up.”

A photograph of a stegosaurus skeleton installed in a dark, dramatically lit museum gallery, with a yellow sign reading Apex with more information below it stationed to the dinosaur's right.

The Apex Stegosaurus on view in the American Museum of Natural History’s Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation. Photo: AMNH.

There are still “very, very few real collectors,” Frahm noted. But younger collectors are interested, according to Salomon Aaron, director of the London-based gallery David Aaron, which sells fossils among other antiquities.

“From our experience, they are professionals in their 30s and 40s, working in the science or tech space,” Aaron said in a phone interview. They are not necessarily existing collectors of fine art, but buy on an “object-by-object” basis.

“A lot of people approach us and say, I did not know I could acquire dinosaur fossils, and this is incredibly exciting,” he added.

Dinosaur fossils come in vast price ranges, he added. Fragments of bones are available at lower prices, while “major world class specimens” can go up to tens of millions of dollars.

What Are Collectors Looking For?

The increasingly prominent placement of dinosaur fossils at art fairs, including Frieze Masters and the now shuttered Masterpiece London, have also aroused interest from new collectors. David Aaron Gallery will return to Frieze Masters this October with a juvenile Triceratops skull from the Maastrichtian, late Cretaceous period (68 to 65 million years ago), on public view for the first time with a price tag of £580,000 ($782,409).

“Historically, skulls, meat-eaters, and complete skeletons that can be displayed in an interior setting tend to be in high demand. This trend is not changing,” said Aaron. He added that buyers are becoming “increasingly conscious of condition and provenance, which is crucially important.”

Indeed, in 2022, Christie’s withdrew a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton named Shen from a Hong Kong sale after experts pointed out that the skeleton contained too many bones that are replicas. It had been estimated to sell for between $15 million and $25 million.

“Collectors should focus on acquiring dinosaur fossils that are complete, beautifully preserved accompanied by the necessary provenance documentation,” Aaron said, adding that seeking advice from a reputable advisor or a consultant would be a plus.

Legal Considerations

Still, the fossil trade faces ongoing criticism over its ethical and legal gray areas. In the U.S.—one of the top sources of dinosaur fossils alongside China—it is legal to excavate, collect, sell, and export fossils found on private land, or with the landowner’s permission. This relatively straightforward legal framework explains why many of the top-selling fossils on the market originate in the U.S.

Aaron noted that the gallery only deals in American dinosaur fossils because of this reason. But the gallery takes extra steps to ensure that the specimen has solid provenance by providing clients crucial information including GPS coordinates of where the fossils were discovered, land deeds, contracts between the excavator and land owner, as well as shipping records, he said.

Things can get complicated if the fossils are found on federal lands or foreign countries, and some in the trade have run into legal troubles.

Fossil hunter Peter Larson, who runs Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City, South Dakota, for example, was jailed for 18 months for custom violations in 1996. He and his associates were accused of removing fossils from public lands. Dealer Eric Prokopi was accused of smuggling dinosaur fossils from abroad and jailed for three months in 2013.

In 2015, the Oscar-winning actor Cage returned a dinosaur skull he acquired for $276,000 in 2007 to the Mongolian government after learning that the skull might have been stolen from Mongolia. Some reports suggested that the case was linked to Prokopi as the gallery from which Cage purchased the skull had bought and sold a skeleton from the convicted dealer.

Commercial fossil hunters that have been excavating these relics for profits have been criticized for the role they play in peddling potentially problematic fossils. They excavate fossils at twice the rate of museums, and sell them to the highest bidders. Some collectors, such as Frahm, gets calls from the ground if anything new was discovered. Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas are among the states where these companies have significant operations.

Consequences of Fossil Privatization

The booming commercial market for fossils means that institutions and museums seeking these prehistoric bones for scientific and education purposes are being priced out by the ultra wealthy. According to one study by Thomas Carr, a paleontologist at Carthage College, released earlier this year, 71 T-Rex fossils are held in private hands, compared to 61 in public trusts. Only 11 percent of the commercially collected bones went to public trusts, and commercial fossil hunters excavate fossils twice the rate of museums.

“[T]he sample size of T. rex [in public trusts] would be more than doubled if it weren’t for profit-driven commercial interests on private lands in the American West,” Carr, who has previously called those market operators “thieves of time,” noted in his paper.

Steve Brusatte, an American paleontologist who works for the University of Edinburgh, lamented that by making dinosaur fossils merely “toys for the rich,” they are effectively lost to science. “Gone, a ghost” if a collector puts it in their mansion, he said. Experts also accused those in the trade of taking fossils from Native American lands, especially in the American West.

Some fossil hunters have had their sales rejected by museums because paleontologists consider the specimens “scientifically useless” if they aren’t held in the public trust, according to Jack Horner, former lead paleontologist at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, and the real-life inspiration for Jurassic Park’s Alan Grant (played by Sam Neill). In 2019, some U.S. paleontologists even called for a global ban on the commercial sale of dinosaur fossils.

“No matter your opinions on private versus public ownership, it’s impossible to ignore the effect of the fossil trade as it inevitably encourages illegal excavation and export from countries that have banned such sales,” wroteDavid Hone, a zoology professor at Queen Mary University of London, in the Guardian. “It’s not hard to feel the frustration of a scientist watching a prize paleontological find up for sale.” https://news.artnet.com/art-world/dinosaur-bones-billionaires-market-2668706