Christie's Cancels T Rex Skeleton Auction After Doubts Raised

The British auction house Christie's has been forced to call off the $23.75m auction of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton just days before it was due to go under the hammer after a well-known paleontologist raised concerns that parts of it looked similar to another dinosaur. From a report: Christie's said on Monday that the 1,400kg (3,100lb) skeleton -- nicknamed Shen -- had been withdrawn from the auction in Hong Kong on 30 November, when it was set to be the star lot. In a brief statement, a spokesperson for Christie's in London said: "After consultation with the consignor of the Tyrannosaurus rex scheduled for sale on 30 November in Hong Kong, Christie's has decided to withdraw the lot. The consignor has now decided to loan the specimen to a museum for public display." [...] It comes after Pete Larson, a paleontologist and the president of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in South Dakota, raised concerns that some of Shen appeared remarkably similar to Stan, another T rex skeleton auctioned off by Christie's for a record-breaking $31.8m in 2020. Larson said it looked as if the unnamed owner of Shen -- which means Godlike in Chinese -- had supplemented some of the skeleton's missing bones with casts of Stan's skeleton. "They're using Stan to sell a dinosaur that's not Stan," Larson told the New York Times. "It's very misleading."

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