'Barry' the Dinosaur Sells for Nearly $1 Million
What would you do if you had $1 million? Buy a house? Or a yacht?
How about a dinosaur?
If you said "dinosaur," you might be too late — because a dinosaur skeleton named "Barry" was just sold in Paris for just under $990,000.
The 150-million-year-old skeleton was sold at auction to an unnamed American on October 20 — the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Jurassic Park movie in France.
Barry was found in Wyoming in the 1990s by a scientist named Barry James, which is how the skeleton got its name.
It was kept in the home of a different American scientist for over 20 years, and was then given to an Italian laboratory for restoration before being sold.
Barry is a Camptosaurus, a type of plant-eating dinosaur that lived in Europe and North America during the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods, a time between about 160 million and 100 million years ago.
It's believed this dinosaur usually walked on two legs, but could bend down to stand on four legs while eating.
Barry's skeleton is 5 meters long and 2.1 meters tall. According to Alexandre Giquello of auction house Hôtel Drouot, the skeleton is unusual because almost all of its parts have been found — the skull is 90% complete, and the rest is 80% complete.
Writing on X (formerly Twitter) after the sale, the auction house said: "So long Barry."
Some scientists worry about dinosaur skeletons being sold to private collectors, because they will no longer be available to be studied. They also worry that the high prices paid by rich collectors will make these skeletons too expensive for museums and researchers to buy.
In 2020, scientists were worried when a 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, called "Stan," was sold for $31.8 million to an unnamed buyer. However, it was later revealed that Stan was bought for a museum scheduled to open in Abu Dhabi in 2025.
