The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology also decried the sale: "Vertebrate fossils are rare and often unique," the society said in a statement. We have asked that the owner remove any association with us from his sale listing." Accordingly, the specimen on exhibit-loan to us has been removed from exhibit and is being returned to the owner. In a statement, museum director Leonard Krishtalka said, "The KU Natural History Museum does not sell or mediate the sale of specimens to private individuals. He didn't initially tell the museum about his plans, but when museum officials found out, they asked that he remove their name from the eBay posting, so they wouldn't be associated with the auctioning of dinosaur fossils. īut after Son of Samson was on display for two years, Detrich felt like "I did my fair share of giving," and he posted it on eBay for $2.95 million. "They could study it, they could show thousands of people this specimen, and they have." Paleontologists contacted by Detrich looked at the bones and estimated that the dinosaur, initially named "Baby Bob" and later "Son of Samson," was about 4 years old when it died during the late Cretaceous, about 68 million years ago. "In honor of Larry, I thought it would be a good thing if I loaned this thing to the museum," Detrich said. Then, in honor of his late mentor, Larry Martin, a vertebrate paleontologist and curator of the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas, he lent it to the museum. rex until he took it to Peter Larson, a paleontologist and president of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in South Dakota.Įxcited, Detrich took the fossils home to Kansas and cleaned them up. Finding Baby BobĪfter digging up the bones, Detrich immediately knew they belonged to a theropod (a group of bipedal, mostly meat-eating dinosaurs), but he didn't know it was a T. It's anyone's guess what the creature really is, as the specimen's owner has declined to let anyone else study the fossil. That's precisely what happened in 2016, when a privately owned, 120-million-year-old specimen from Brazil drew controversy: A group of scientists called it the first four-legged snake on record, and another group announced that it wasn't a snake at all, but likely a dolichosaurid, an extinct snake-like marine lizard.
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