THE ISSUES Dinosaurs


country of origin. But who knew? Plus, I never got my money back. So that stank.’ Crowe bought the skull of a Mosasaur, a marine reptile, from DiCaprio, who wanted to sell it to fund buying another dinosaur. Crowe told the Howard Stern show that his kids were fascinated with dinosaurs so he agreed to buy it. ‘There was a bunch of vod- ka involved in that transaction,’ he added.


H


‘Apex’, a 27ft-long stegosaurus, set a record last year when hedge fund  right) paid $44.6 million for it


an American fossil hunter who found the fossil in South Dakota in 1990. Sue (the fossilised one) was sold at Sotheby’s in 1997 for $8.3 million, where it was bought not by a billionaire, but by the Field Museum in Chicago, where it is still on permanent public display.


‘S


ue really kickstarted public interest in dinosaurs and the realisation that you could buy them,’ Hatton says in an


interview with Spear’s over a scratchy phone line that keeps cutting out. She explains the reason for the poor signal: she’s ‘out west in the desert on a work trip’. She won’t go into further details, as she’s looking at a new dinosaur discovery and doesn’t want others in the fast-growing industry to get wind of it before she’s secured it for a forth- coming auction. Since the sale of Sue, the ruling family of


Abu Dhabi bought Stan, the most complete T. rex skeleton ever found, for a then- record-breaking $31.8 million in 2020. It is set to be the star of the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, which is scheduled to


open on the Emirate’s Saadiyat Island to- wards the end of 2025. Stan’s record was shattered by Griffin, the billionaire founder of the Citadel hedge fund. Growing up, Griffin’s favourite toy was a stuffed dinosaur, and memories of that were what led him to bid for Apex. ‘I’ve al- ways loved dinosaurs,’ he said in an inter- view with Bloomberg. ‘I’ve always been fas- cinated by this moment in the history of our planet. 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 opportu- nity I could not pass up.’ Nicolas Cage, Russell Crowe and Leonar-


do DiCaprio have also all bought parts of di- nosaurs, with Cage and DiCaprio going up against each other at auction in 2007 for a skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar (a close rel- ative of the T. rex). Cage won, paying $276,000 for the skull, but in 2015 he was forced to give it up aſter it was found to have been illegally smuggled out of Mongolia. ‘I bought it at a legitimate auction and


found out it was abducted from Mongolia il- legally, and then I had to give it back,’ he said. ‘Of course it should be awarded to its


THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE MAYBE JUST LOOKING FOR A DINOSAUR AND IT


DOESN’T REALLY MATTER IF IT’S A T. REX OR A GORGOSAURUS OR A STEGOSAURUS


atton says celebrities, billionaires and everyone else who has bought a dinosaur fossil – which can be picked


up for as little as £200 for individual teeth – are all united by their ‘childhood wonder of the creatures that walked on Earth the same as we do but millions of years ago’. ‘The link between them all is a curiosity


for things that are super-historically, cultur- ally, and scientifically important,’ she says. ‘There are people who are maybe just look- ing for a dinosaur and it doesn’t really mat- ter if it’s a T. rex or a gorgosaurus or a stego- saurus. [They’ll say] “I just want a dinosaur.”’ But there are others who know almost as much about dinosaurs as palaeontologists


ALAMY, MATTHEW SHERMAN


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