T. rex’s ‘Dueling Dinosaurs’ fossil, triceratops sold for $ 6 million

• The “Dueling Dinosaurs” fossil is made up of intertwined T. rex and triceratops skeletons.
• Friends of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences nonprofit bought it for $ 6 million. The museum will exhibit the fossils from 2022.
• There, researchers will examine the bones in detail and determine if the dinosaurs actually died in a duel.
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A 67-million-year-old pair of fossils known as “Dueling Dinosaurs” consist of a remarkably preserved T. rex alongside the bones of an equally intact Triceratops.

For years, skeletons languished in laboratories and warehouses as ranchers and paleontologists fought a legal battle for their property. That fight ended on Tuesday: Friends of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences nonprofit bought the dinosaurs for $ 6 million, according to the Charlotte Observer. The 30,000-pound fossils will soon arrive at the Raleigh Museum, which plans to start work on a new dueling dinosaur exhibit in May.

The exhibit, which is slated to open to the public in 2022, will allow museum visitors to watch staff paleontologists examine the fossils in detail, stripping the surrounding rock to analyze bones and soft tissue remains.

“There will be literally thousands of studies done on these fossils,” Tyler Lyson, a paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, told National Geographic.

Researchers hope to find out how dinosaurs died

Dueling dinosaurs get their name from the most important theory about them – given the skeletons’ proximity, researchers speculated that the pair may have died in action. Some teeth of T. rex are even integrated into the skeleton of Triceratops, which confirms the theory.

Seth Wenig / AP

But other explanations are also possible – maybe the T. rex found the triceratops already dead, for example.

“It’s a murder mystery that’s been brewing for 67 million years,” Lindsay Zanno, the museum’s chief paleontologist, told the Charlotte Observer. “It’s the kind of thing that makes a Paleo team drool.”

To unravel the mystery, the museum’s research team obtained permission to visit the site in Montana where fossil hunters first unearthed the dinosaurs. There, they plan to search for clues that could reveal when each creature died and how it was preserved.

Returning to the museum, researchers will also examine the fossils closely to see if any of the skeletons show possible signs of combat-related damage.

A delicate sale in preparation for more than a decade

Seth Wenig / AP

The dueling dinosaurs were discovered in 2006 on a Montana ranch owned by Lige and Mary Ann Murray. Fossil hunter Clayton Phipps and his team were keeping watch on the ranch when his cousin, Chad O’Connor, followed a trail of bone fragments to a pool of Triceratops protruding from a hill. After a few months of excavation, the team unearthed almost complete Triceratops and T. rex skeletons.

The Murrays legally owned the fossils because they were discovered on their lands. Phipps’ fossil hunting team stored the skeletons in a private lab. They spent years trying to get museums to buy them, but they couldn’t get anyone to bid above the minimum fossil value. Then in 2016, the skeletons came to the attention of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and affiliated donors.

Negotiations were ongoing until former Murrays trading partners learned of the fossil discovery and continued, alleging they also had rights to the bones because they still had mining rights to the ranch.

In June, after multiple cases and appeals, a ruling in favor of the Murrays allowed the sale to continue.

Phipps told National Geographic he was just happy his discovery will finally see the light of day.

“I want to take my grandchildren out there someday and say, ‘Hey, your old grandpa found these dinosaurs,'” he said. “People are going to be able to see them forever. This is what I always wanted. “