It may not be a Matisse, or a Warhol, but this multimillion-dollar sale at Christie’s comes from the hand of a different kind of artist: Mother Nature.
Late on Thursday, Christie’s sold the skeleton of a Deinonychus antirrhopus — a species that became one of the world’s most recognizable dinosaurs after the release of the movie “Jurassic Park” — for $12.4 million, with fees, to an undisclosed buyer. The auction continues the trend of high-priced fossil sales, a pattern that has irked some paleontologists, who fear that specimens could become lost to science if they are bought by private individuals rather than public institutions.
The auction house said the fossil, nicknamed Hector, was the first public sale of a Deinonychus, an agile, bipedal dinosaur known for the menacing claws on its feet. The sale price was more than double the auction house’s estimated high of $6 million.
