Rare 150 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Known As Barry To Be Auctioned In Paris

Discovered in the 1990s in the US state of Wyoming, the skeleton was initially restored in 2000 by palaeontologist Barry James.

Rare 150 million-year-old dinosaur to be auctioned in Paris ( Image Source :Hôtel Drouot )

A dinosaur skeleton dating back 150 million years is all set to go under the hammer in an auction house in Paris. Yes, you read that right. The well-preserved dinosaur skeleton, a Camptosaurus named "Barry" will be auctioned on October 20, 2023 at Hôtel Drouot room 9. According to the Giquello auction house, the 150 million years old dinosaur skeleton 6 feet tall and stretches 16 feet long.

Discovered in the 1990s in the US state of Wyoming, the skeleton was initially restored in 2000 by palaeontologist Barry James, from whom it got its name. Italian laboratory Zoic acquired Barry last year and carried out further restoration work on the skeleton.

"With the invaluable help of the University of Bologna’s Paleontology Department, Zoic undertook the meticulous task of disassembling, cleaning, and cataloguing the specimen’s original bones in order to carry out a complete reconstruction of the specimen according to current scientific standards, and then renamed it Barry," reads the press release.

Barry is an adult specimen of Camptosauridae, a member of the family Iguanodontidae, one of the earliest groups of dinosaurs discovered. It is an exceptionally complete and well-preserved specimen with 80 percent of the original bone and 90 percent of  the skull complete with teeth, as per a press release shared by Hôtel Drouot.

"To take the example of its skull, the skull is complete at 90%, and the rest of the dinosaur's skeleton is complete at 80%," Alexandre Giquello, from the Paris auction house Hotel Drouot.

There have ben seven auctions of Dinosaur skeletons in the past in the hotel that include  Big John the triceratops in 2021), Zephyr the «living room dinosaur» in 2022 and Big Sara the allosaurus in 2020.

The auction is expected to fetch anywhere around  $1.2 million.