Ancient monsters challenging old masters at world's auction houses

The allosaurus fetched €1.41 million ($2.35m) when it sold at auction in Paris this week. Photo / AP

Two dinosaur skeletons marketed more as trendy design objects than prehistoric fossils have sold for almost €3 million ($5m) at auction in Paris.

A diplodocus — a huge herbivore measuring 12m from nose to tail — fetched €1.44m, compared with €1.41m for a carnivorous allosaurus with "60 sharpened teeth", a mere 3.8m in length. Both roamed the Earth around 150 million years ago, in the late Jurassic period.

Sixty per cent intact, the allosaurus had been expected to fetch up to €650,000. It lived in an area in what is today North America and Europe. A North American dweller, the diplodocus had been estimated at up to €500,000.

Only a handful of dinosaur skeletons are auctioned off around the world each year and are mostly snapped up by wealthy collectors or museums in Europe or the United States. Scars from battle or disease can raise prices.

The pair were bought by an online overseas buyer, the Drouot auction house said.

"It shows the interest of a new generation of fans both for the Jurassic era and the tools of the 21st century," said Iacopo Briano, a fossil sales expert.

He hailed the "exceptional" sale prices, although neither was a record. The nationality of Thursday's buyer was not revealed but auctioneers have noted a surge in interest in China.

Allosaurus Jimmadseni, found in Wyoming, U.S. Photo / AP

"The fossil market is no longer just for scientists," Briano told AFP. "Dinosaurs have become cool, trendy — real objects of decoration, like paintings," he said, citing Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicolas Cage, the Hollywood actors, as fans of enormous prehistoric ornaments.

Cage handed back the rare skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, a close cousin of T. rex, that he bought in 2007 after it was found to have been stolen and illegally taken out of Mongolia.

Leonardo DiCaprio is a collector. Photo / Supplied

Another huge skeleton, that of a theropod, is expected to fetch up to €1.5m when it goes up for auction in June.

Briano said Chinese buyers were also active in the market.

"For the last two or three years the Chinese have become interested in palaeontology and have been looking for big specimens of dinosaurs found on their soil, for their museums or even for individuals," he said.

In 1997, McDonald's and Walt Disney were among donors who raised US$8.36m ($11.3m) to buy Sue — the most complete and best preserved T. rex ever unearthed — for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

- Telegraph Group Ltd