76 million-year-old dinosaur skeleton from Havre to be auctioned

Staff and wire report

A former local resident is going up for auction with the presale estimate for the going price $5 million to $8 million, The Assoiated Press reports.

The fossilized skeleton of a T. rex relative that roamed the earth about 76 million years ago will be auctioned in New York this month, Sotheby's announced Tuesday.

The Gorgosaurus skeleton will highlight Sotheby's natural history auction July 28, the auction house said.

The Gorgosaurus was an apex carnivore that lived in what is now the western United States and Canada during the late Cretaceous Period. It predated its relative the Tyrannosaurus rex by 10 million years.

The specimen being sold was discovered in 2018 in the Judith River Formation near Havre, Sotheby's said. It measures nearly 10 feet tall and 22 feet long.

All of the other known Gorgosaurus skeletons are in museum collections, making this one the only specimen available for private ownership, the auction house said.

"In my career, I have had the privilege of handling and selling many exceptional and unique objects, but few have the capacity to inspire wonder and capture imaginations quite like this unbelievable Gorgosaurus skeleton," Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's global head of science and popular culture, said.

This region of Montana has held a number of famous dinosaur finds in addition to the Gorgosaurus. That includes Leonardo, a mummified duckbill dinosaur listed as the best-preserved dinosaur ever found, found in Phillips County; Egg Mountain near Choteau, which has yielded the largest cache of dinosaur eggs, embryos, and baby skeletons found in the Western Hemisphere, and Zuul, an ankylosaur armored club-tailed dinosaur also found near Havre that was a new variant of the dinosaur and also one of the best-preserved fossils found in the Judith River Formation.