From headline-grabbing auction results to controversial crimes and ethical debates, 2025 has been a big year for dinosaurs. We recap how these prehistoric beasts came roaring back into the art world headlines.

Dinosaur Fossils Seized

A pair of Allosaurus fossils sold at Christie’s Jurassic Icons auction in London in 2024. Photo: Courtesy Christie’s Press Centre.

Everybody wants a piece of dinosaur fossils, which regularly sell for eye-popping numbers. In November, a pair of Allosaurus fossils and a Stegosaurus skeleton worth a total of £12 million ($15.6 million) were seized by the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency. These ancient remains, from 145 million to 157 million years ago, belonged to Binghai Su, a 37-year-old U.K.-based Chinese national who was linked to the biggest money-laundering case in Singapore.

These fossils were acquired from Christie’s Jurassic Icons auction in London in 2024. Billed as a major highlight from the sale, the Allosaurus set was made up of a skeleton of a juvenile and an adult dinosaur. It sold for more than £8 million ($10.7 million) after fees, and the Stegosaurus skeleton sold for £4.3 million ($5.7 million).

Su was never charged in relation to the Singapore case, but he agreed to forfeit the dinosaur fossils, among other assets, after reaching a settlement with British police on November 5. The agency will sell all the pieces seized, including nine London apartments worth £15.7 million ($21 million) and 11 Chinese ancient works of art acquired from Sotheby’s for more than £400,000 ($537,294) in 2022. Su will retain 25 percent of the sale proceeds.

This was not the first time that dinosaur fossils involved in controversial legal disputes and illegal trades. Back in 2023, four people were charged by Utah authorities for stealing $1 million worth of dinosaur bones and plotting to sell them illegally to China. And, in 2015, Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage surrendered a Tyrannosaurus bataar skull that he bought for $276,000 to U.S. authorities, as it turned out the piece was stolen from Mongolia.

Major Sales

A unique juvenile Ceratosaurus sold for $30.5 million at Sotheby’s on July 16. Photo: Matthew Sherman.

It was a banner year for major skeleton and fossil sales, reflecting the intense and surging interest in dinosaurs from millionaires, billionaires, and other ambitious natural history enthusiasts.

In July, Sotheby’s sold the only known juvenile Ceratosaurus fossil for a hefty, premium-inclusive $30.5 million against a pre-sale high-end estimate of $6 million. The price is among the highest achieved at auction for a fossil. The auction house confirmed that the winning bidder already had plans to loan it to an institution. Only three other such Ceratosaurus fossils are known to exist.

Then, this past fall, as Artnet noted, “Phillips has entered the dinosaur game.” For the first time, Phillips, which is best known for selling cutting-edge, ultra-contemporary art by up-and-coming artists, offered a juvenile Triceratops skeleton at its November evening sale. It sold for $5.4 million, or more than double the low-end $2.5 million pre-sale estimate. (Final prices include premium, while estimates do not.)

While the pool of serious dinosaur bone hunters and trophy buyers may still be relatively small, there are hints that the ranks are on the rise. In an Artnet report this past summer, it was noted that buyers range from private collectors to institutions, and even state entities: “For instance, Abu Dhabi bought Stan, a complete T-Rex fossil, at Christie’s in 2020 for a then-record $31.8 million.” And, when the United Arab Emirates’ new Natural History Museum opened late last month, in the city’s Saadiyat Cultural District, the star was, indeed, none other than Stan.

Meanwhile, the most expensive dinosaur fossil at auction, a Stegosaurus named Apex that top collector and hedge fund titan Kenneth Griffin bought in summer 2024 for $44.6 million at Sotheby’s, was loaned to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The loan is expected to continue into 2028.

More recently, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History acquired a complete skull of Pachycephalosaurus, a dinosaur known for its domed head that lived with species including Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops at the end of the Cretaceous period (roughly 67 million years ago). The rare fossil was purchased and donated to the museum by Eric and Wendy Schmidt. Eager viewers will have the opportunity to see the skull in person starting next week (December  22), when it will be on temporary display in the museum’s FossiLab.

Public Impact

Paul Vanstone’s Carrara Triceratops Skull (2025), presented in collaboration with David Aaron. Photo: David Owens.

While popularity of collecting dinosaur bones among contemporary collectors has resurged in recent years, it’s also sparked debates on the ethical issues revolving around the trade, access, provenance, and the privatization of science, with experts calling for tighter regulations.

Thomas Carr, a paleontologist at Carthage College who has called those market operators “thieves of time,” revealed in a study published earlier this year that 71 T-Rex fossils are held in private hands, against 61 in public trusts. Commercial fossil hunters excavate fossils two times faster than museums, with only 11 percent of the commercially collected bones ending up in public trusts.

“[T]he sample size of T. rex [in public trusts] would be more than doubled if it weren’t for profit-driven commercial interests on private lands in the American West,” Carr noted in his paper. Some paleontologists around the world have called for a global ban on the commercial sale of dinosaur fossils.

Salomon Aaron, director of the London-based gallery David Aaron, which sells fossils among other antiquities, advised prospective buyers to pay close attention not just to the condition of the specimen, but also the necessary provenance documentation. While fossils excavated from private lands in the United States are generally legal to collect, buy, and sell, with the landowners’ permission, trading fossils found in some places, such as the federal lands in the U.S. or foreign countries like China, may run into legal troubles.