A 66-million-year-old triceratops skeleton that once welcomed visitors at a Wyoming museum is set to go under the hammer on an online auction platform founded by Grammy-winning star Pharrell Williams.
The fossil, nicknamed “Trey,” will be open for bidding from March 17 to 31 on Joopiter, with a pre-auction estimate of between $4.5 million and $5.5 million.
Trey, a 17-foot-long herbivore from the late Cretaceous period, was discovered near Lusk, Wyoming, in 1993 by Lee Campbell and the late commercial paleontologist Allen Graffham. It later became a star attraction at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis, where it stood on display from the museum’s 1995 grand opening until 2023.
The skeleton has since been sold in a private transaction and is currently in Singapore, where it is available for private viewings through the end of March.
Paleontologist Andre LuJan, who worked with Joopiter to prepare the fossil for auction, said Trey carries a unique cultural weight.
“This one is connected to people and undoubtedly has inspired young children who’ve seen it to pursue a career in paleontology,” he said.
The sale comes at a time when dinosaur fossils are fetching record prices, as wealthy collectors increasingly treat them as alternative investments.
In 2024, the remains of “Apex” the stegosaurus sold for a staggering $44.6 million, breaking the previous $31.8 million record paid in 2020 for “Stan,” a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. Just months ago, a rare juvenile dinosaur skeleton soared past its $4 million to $6 million estimate at Sotheby’s and ultimately sold for more than $30 million after a fierce bidding war.
Caitlin Donovan, Joopiter’s global head of sales, said interest in fossils reflects a shift from traditional collectibles such as old master paintings to objects with what she described as “cultural resonance.”
However, the booming market has sparked concern among scientists who fear valuable specimens could vanish into private collections.
Kristi Curry Rogers, a paleontologist at Macalester College in Minnesota, warned that public museums are being “totally priced out of an exploding market.”
“If a fossil goes into a private collection without guaranteed access forever, that data is essentially lost to science,” she said.
LuJan countered that Trey has always been privately owned and expressed hope that the next buyer would follow a growing trend of loaning such fossils to museums or donating them for public display and scientific research.
Triceratops, whose name means “three-horned face,” lived around 66 million years ago and remains one of the most recognisable dinosaurs in history.
