France has agreed to buy the only known skeleton of Dubreuillosaurus valesdunensis, a 167-million-year-old meat-eating dinosaur found in Normandy, pulling it from an auction that had been scheduled for Nov. 18 at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. The culture and research ministries announced on Monday, Nov. 9, that the fossil will join the national collections at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN).
The deal was negotiated privately with the auction house Millon, acting for the heirs of the fossil’s discoverer, and paid for with an exceptional grant from the culture ministry’s heritage fund and support from the research ministry, according to the ministry statement. The price was not disclosed. Franceinfo reported the pre-sale estimate was around €300,000, a sum it said no French museum could have raised on its own.
Why this dinosaur matters
The skeleton was found in 1994 in Conteville, in the Eure department, by André Dubreuil, then the village mayor, on land he owned. Excavations by teams from the MNHN, the CNRS research agency and Sorbonne University recovered the rest of the skeleton, and paleontologists described it as a new species of theropod closely related to the megalosaurs, naming it after Dubreuil.
The fossil is a holotype, the reference specimen that scientists anywhere must be able to consult to identify the species. The ministry said its skull is one of the most complete and best preserved of any theropod in Europe, and that before its discovery almost nothing was known about the skull and skeleton of megalosaurs. It is also one of the last dinosaur specimens from Normandy, because others were destroyed in the bombing of 1944, the ministry said.
“We would no longer have had a point of comparison,” Marie-Béatrice Forel, director of collections at the MNHN, told franceinfo (our translation), explaining that a holotype in private hands would make it impossible for scientists to check other similar fossils against it.
How it was saved
Dubreuil placed the skeleton in the museum’s collections starting in 1998, and it had been on display since 2014 at the Paléospace museum in Villers-sur-Mer. After his death, his heirs decided to sell. The planned sale set off a campaign by paleontologists. A petition started by a student, Mattéo Gagnaire, gathered nearly 5,000 signatures, and an online fundraiser raised €17,000, franceinfo reported. “We knew the fundraiser was symbolic,” Forel said. Gagnaire, quoting Indiana Jones, told the broadcaster: “It belongs in a museum!”
Analysis: the private fossil market
By The Boston Report’s calculation, the crowdfunding total equaled about 6% of the reported €300,000 estimate, which is why state money was decisive. The broader trend worries scientists. Franceinfo reported that a Nanotyrannus specimen sold for €42 million at auction in New York in early November, and that by the count of American paleontologist Thomas Carr, 71 Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons are in private hands, compared with 61 in institutions open to the public.
By our calculation from Carr’s figures, about 54% of the known T. rex skeletons are privately held. Researchers told franceinfo they have contacted French lawmakers about tighter fossil protections, citing Mongolia, which bans exports of dinosaur remains found on its soil. “Time is working against us,” said Bastien Mennecart, president of the French Paleontological Association (our translation).
What happens next
The skeleton will go to the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, which is scheduled to reopen in summer 2027, Euronews reported. Researchers plan CT scans of its bone fibers and musculature to support a new biomechanical mounting, according to the ministry. The museum is marking its 400th anniversary this year.
For more fossil science, read how researchers found heme in 115-million-year-old dinosaur blood cells from Brazil, and how a Siberian tomb revealed Scythian cannabis use 2,800 years ago.
Sources
- French Ministry of Culture: Un dinosaure français d’exception, le Dubreuillosaurus valesdunensis, rejoint prochainement les collections nationales
- Euronews: Paris natural history museum acquires 167-million-year-old carnivorous dinosaur skeleton
- franceinfo: 'Sa place est dans un musée' : la France stoppe la vente aux enchères d'un spécimen de dinosaure unique au monde
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