Christie's has known as off the public sale of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, the public sale home informed Agence France-Presse Monday, days earlier than it was resulting from go underneath the hammer in Hong Kong.
The cancellation got here The New York Occasions reported on Sunday that an American fossil firm raised doubts about elements of the skeleton named "Shen."
Christie's mentioned in a press release to AFP that Shen -- a 3,100-pound skeleton -- was withdrawn from its autumn auctions week that begin in Hong Kong on Friday.
"The consignor has now determined to mortgage the specimen to a museum for public show," it mentioned.
Excavated from Montana, Shen stands 15 toes tall and 39 toes lengthy and is considered an grownup male that lived about 67 million years in the past.
Its public sale would have adopted the sale of one other T. rex skeleton, named "Stan," by Christie's for $31.8 million in 2020.
It is extremely uncommon for full dinosaur skeletons to be discovered, in response to The Area Museum in Chicago, one of many largest pure historical past museums on the earth.
Most frames on show use casts of bones to finish the skeleton. The Area Museum estimates the variety of bones in a T. rex at 380.
Christie's had mentioned about 80 of Shen's bones have been unique.
The controversy was sparked when Peter Larson, president of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Analysis in the USA, informed The New York Occasions that elements of Shen appeared just like Stan.
The Black Hills Institute holds the mental property rights to Stan, even after its sale in 2020, and it sells replicas of that skeleton.
Larson informed the newspaper it appeared to him that Shen's proprietor -- not recognized by Christie's -- used bones from a Stan duplicate to finish the skeleton.
Christie's spokesman Edward Lewine informed the newspaper that the public sale home believes Shen "would profit from additional examine".
Gross sales of such skeletons have raked in tens of tens of millions of dollars in recent times, however consultants have described the commerce as dangerous to science for the reason that auctions might put them in non-public palms and out of the attain of researchers.