British auction house Christie's will be auctioning off one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever discovered, expecting to fetch a record-setting price on October 6.

Popularly known as Stan, or its inventory number BHI 3033, the T rex skeleton stands at 13 feet tall (3.9 meters) and about 40 feet long (12 meters). Stan's remains were found in Hell Creek Formation, popular for the volume of the fossils found in the area, in a private land just outside Buffalo, South Dakota.

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The Fifth Most Complete and Perhaps the Most Expensive Ever Sold

As an item in Christie's 20th Century Evening Sale event in New York City, the largely complete skeleton is expected to fetch between $6 million to $8 million, though some estimates are looking at greater numbers.

The current record for the most expensive T rex skeleton ever sold belongs to Sue, which was sold for $8.36 million. Sue was sold to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, in 1997.

Some estimates expressed confidence that Stan can be sold for more, despite Sue being larger and more complete, because Stan "represents one of the most complete fossil skeletons of the most famous dinosaur species ever to have lived," according to its page in Christie's website.

"It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to acquire a T. rex as complete as this," said James Hyslop, head of Science & Natural History department of Christie's, in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP). He added that there are not a lot of complete skeletons available and stressed that it is a "once-in-a-generation opportunity."

Stan, estimated to have died around 60 million years ago at around 20 years old, has been instrumental in allowing other museums to create their own replica of a complete T rex exhibit modeled after it.

 

Excavating Stan

The skeleton was named after its discoverer, amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison, in 1987. It was later excavated by the Black Hill Institute of Geological Research in Hill City, South Dakota in 1992.

According to Paleontology World, the fossil remains were found in a Badlands outcrop, with the excavation effort requiring the removal of an overburden - a large rock that covers the specimen - through the use of a Bobcat heavy equipment.

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According to researchers, the most notable part of Stan the T rex was his nearly complete skull, whose bones were discovered in pristine condition. Although some bones were separated from each other at first, paleontologists agree on the general good condition of the discovery.

 

In a 2018 interview for the show Brave Wilderness, Peter Larson commented that the condition of Stan's skull allowed scientists to better understand how the cranial kinesis took place in the T rex. Additionally, owing to his narrow pelvis, paleontologists believed him to be a male specimen. A feature article for the Black Hill Institute noted that based on the specimen found together with Stan, the dinosaur lived in a family group and found his mate in a female specimen 30 percent heavier than him.

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