To be harnessed for hammering on November 16 in Paris, "Vulcain" is one of the largest dinosaurs to have ever walked the earth 150 million years ago.
The "most complete" and largest dino skeleton that has been up for auction is already crossing the estimates, according to two of the French auction houses involved - Collin du Bocage and Barbarossa - since pre-registration bidding opened in July, estimating around USD 11-USD 22 million, approximately Rs 92-185 crore.
A tremendous Apatosaurus skeleton was discovered in Wyoming last year, 2018, with a measure of 20.50 meters. More than 80 percent of the bones were of the same dinosaur, the most complete dinosaur skeleton discovered thus far.
"Vulcain is the largest and most complete dinosaur above all others," Olivier Collin du Bocage said, who founded and served as auctioneer for Collin du Bocage, commenting on the fossil find of a lifetime.
With the sale of "Vulcain", the market of dinosaur skeleton continues to experience an upsurge after it had in 1997 sold one T-Rex named 'Sue" for US dollars 8.4 million and at earlier parts of this year, US dollars 44.6 million was reported as realized from a 'record deal' sale for "Apex" Stegosaurus.
With it, the purchaser shall also be accorded with the rights to formally name the dinosaur with the use of an osteological map, GPS point, and plan of excavation and all the copyrights of the specimen.
"Vulcain," one of the most complete sauropod fossils from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation, was studied by the world's top paleontology experts, including Christian Foth of the University of Rostock in Germany, who recently discovered the specimen to be a new dinosaur species.
Their comparison concluded that the "Vulcain" dinosaur, despite possessing characteristics of both Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus, still shows a closer affinity with Apatosaurus ajax but shares characteristics with the recognized species Apatosaurus louisae.
It therefore presents a unique characteristic that may be considered to represent an intermediate species between Apatosaurus ajax and Apatosaurus louisae.
Considering materials and deposits found in fossiliferous soil, it was classified as herbivorous.
Compared to the Apatosaurus specimen that exists in the Natural History Museum in New York, this consists of the skeletons of three different individual dinosaurs, Vulcain is 80 percent a complete dinosaur and also has a part of its skull and gastralia, which are rare elements missing from most of the specimens found.
Already in the field it was impressive, a kind of giant Mikado, Pascal Godefroit says, who is a palaeontology at Belgium's Royal Institute of Natural Sciences. We were very impressed, because not only does the Apatosaurus, which is much rarer than the Diplodocus, but we could already see that it was an exceptional specimen.
Godefroit had witnessed the discovery of Vulcain as his team was working at the same site, unearthing a Diplodocus.
These discoveries, coupled with the palaeontology community and scientists abuzz in fossil fairs and the art and auction world with all the news about the emergence of dinosaur specimens, have increased the interest and speculation about where "Vulcain" will go home to after going under the gavel on November 16.
The giant American dinosaur has since been on show at Château de Dampierre-en-Yvelines outside Paris, attracting over 40,000 visitors so far since the show opened in July.
This dinosaur will be on public exhibition from November 3 to 16 at the 17th century chateau.
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