Christie's Cancels T Rex Skeleton Auction After Doubts Raised (theguardian.com) 45
The British auction house Christie's has been forced to call off the $23.75m auction of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton just days before it was due to go under the hammer after a well-known paleontologist raised concerns that parts of it looked similar to another dinosaur. From a report: Christie's said on Monday that the 1,400kg (3,100lb) skeleton -- nicknamed Shen -- had been withdrawn from the auction in Hong Kong on 30 November, when it was set to be the star lot. In a brief statement, a spokesperson for Christie's in London said: "After consultation with the consignor of the Tyrannosaurus rex scheduled for sale on 30 November in Hong Kong, Christie's has decided to withdraw the lot. The consignor has now decided to loan the specimen to a museum for public display."
[...] It comes after Pete Larson, a paleontologist and the president of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in South Dakota, raised concerns that some of Shen appeared remarkably similar to Stan, another T rex skeleton auctioned off by Christie's for a record-breaking $31.8m in 2020. Larson said it looked as if the unnamed owner of Shen -- which means Godlike in Chinese -- had supplemented some of the skeleton's missing bones with casts of Stan's skeleton. "They're using Stan to sell a dinosaur that's not Stan," Larson told the New York Times. "It's very misleading."
[...] It comes after Pete Larson, a paleontologist and the president of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in South Dakota, raised concerns that some of Shen appeared remarkably similar to Stan, another T rex skeleton auctioned off by Christie's for a record-breaking $31.8m in 2020. Larson said it looked as if the unnamed owner of Shen -- which means Godlike in Chinese -- had supplemented some of the skeleton's missing bones with casts of Stan's skeleton. "They're using Stan to sell a dinosaur that's not Stan," Larson told the New York Times. "It's very misleading."
Property rights (Score:5, Informative)
There's more to it than this. Pretty much any dinosaur exhibit you'll ever see contains replica parts, as it is incredibly rare for any large dinosaur fossil to be complete. For example Stan is around 70% complete, thus 30% is fabricated. Using some other existing dinosaur castings to fill in the missing blanks isn't a bad thing at all, because otherwise they would have to totally approximate them from what is known from other specimens (or just give it a best educated guess). The real gist of the issue is the next paragraph in the article after the Slashdot summary:
The Black Hills Institute holds the intellectual property rights to Stan, even after its sale in 2020, and it sells painted polyurethane replicas casts of the skeleton for $120,000 each.
So if Shen contains replicated portions of Stan, then they're violating the IP. That's what this is all about. Not that Shen contains fabricated parts, as that is very common and would clearly be disclosed which portions are actual fossil. It's about money.
My guess is this will be loaned to a museum while new replacement parts (not based on Stan) are fabricated, then it can be sold.
Re:Property rights (Score:5, Funny)
Today I learned that 60+ million year old dinosaur bones fall under intellectual property rights. Mickey Mouse copyright suddenly doesn't seem so crazy.
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And as Indian Jones once said. "That belongs in a museum!"
Strike "museum". Substitute "warehouse."
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Also strike "Indian" [sic]. Indiana was the dog!
Re: Property rights (Score:2)
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What is copyrighted are the 3d scan files, STL models etc made from those originals (or, the Louvre's printed images of the Mona Lisa in the analogy).
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I agree with you but I assume it went something like this,
"We spent a lot of time and money to dig up this skeleton, display it, advertise it, name it, and so on. We named it and copyrighted that name, therefore any representation or likeness thereof is ours".
I'm not a lawyer but did work for an IP specialist for a while and absorbed some of the basics. If this isn't their argument then no idea what else they could base it on.
The key element here would be the representation of Stan as seen in copies of hi
Sue the T-Rex named Sue for being an T-REX! (Score:2)
Sue the T-Rex named Sue for being an T-REX!
As we have trade marked the word T-REX
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I don't know where you get the 30 seconds number from but it is certainly not a universally accepted number. Dela Soul got sued for sampling a 12 second clip and Vanilla Ice got sued for a 3 second clip.
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Shrug, it's the number I was taught. But that wasn't my point. Dinosaurs were the topic.
Anyway, getting sued doesn't mean anything. I can sue you and slashdot for mental cruelty for making me feel bad about my post.
Doesn't mean jack shit but I can sue you. Did either win their 3 and 12 second suits?
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Dela Soul settled out of court for $1.7 million [briffa.com] (they were initially sued for $2.5 million).
Vanilla Ice paid $4 million to buy the rights for the song he sampled (Under Pressure by Queen) because it was cheaper than fighting it in court. [exclaim.ca]
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My theory? Which theory? Was that a dinosaur case? Are you a lawyer? In what field? Why do you hate dinosaurs?
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They didn't copyright the skeleton, just the replicas made from the casts. Yes, it's a bit overly stretchy of copyright law but it's far from the first abuse of copyright law intent. Snag is, you can't just make your own casting. The intent though is that this affects private collectors, which is a big market, so it's a money maker with money coming from the incredibly wealthy. Thus the museum gets to hold this piece for free in the meantime.
Of course, if a super rich person had bought it first, then it
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Not so incredibly wealthy. If I were in the market for getting another car ever, and earning twice what I did, $120k for a car isn't utterly incredible. I could conceive of spending $120k for a T-rex cast far more easily.
OK, I'd need a larger home to put it into - probably as a slightly over-the-top TV stand - so I'd probably need three times the income to support house and cast. But that's still in "skilled employee" territory, not mega-rich.
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Assuming the copied parts are not ones that the Black Hills Institute fabricated from scratch, I find it pretty mind-boggling that anyone can "own" the intellectual property rights to a natural animal skeleton.
It's like a sculptor creating the bones based on his interpretation of what the bones should look like. The artist has intellectual rights to the sculpture, even though that creation mimics nature. Similarly, the Black Hills Institute has rights to its artistic creation. They own the artistic piece, not nature itself.
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I hear the dinosaur skeleton named BIDEN is actually 100% complete and genuine.
Just one problem - a barely living human being is still using it.
That's nothing -- the only living Neanderthal just announced he's running for President in 2024!
Re:Property rights (Score:4)
That is not fair to Neanderthals.
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Actual neanderthal's were likely more of a tan rather than orange as well, having lived before the days of spray ons.
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Actual neanderthal's were likely more of a tan rather than orange as well, having lived before the days of spray ons.
I think Neanderthals had all natural hair whereas Trump uses spray-on hair from his warehouse stash of defunct GLH hair care products from Ron Popeil.
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It’s all for show. They’ll just rebuild it and sell it several years from now with some
Cast? (Score:2)
raised concerns that parts of it looked similar to another dinosaur
So at this point, I was thinking they were just talking about using bones from a dinosaur that wasn't a T-Rex. But then...
had supplemented some of the skeleton's missing bones with casts of Stan's skeleton
Would it really be that difficult to distinguish a real bone from a cast? How did this even make it to that stage of nearly getting auctioned? You couldn't possibly expect to fool the actual purchaser passing off a cast bone for a real one.
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The issue isn't any of the things you're worried about: the auctioner and any serious bidders knew that some of the bones were replicas. The issue here is, believe it or not, infringement of IP rights in the copied dinosaur.
Re: Cast? (Score:2)
How do you copy parts of a dinosaur skeleton without the original's owner knowing?
"Hey Bob. Can I borrow your dinosaur for a few hours? I'll bring it right back. I promise."
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They sell a complete replica for less than 200k USD, so given that the estimated auction value was 20M USD it's possible that that was the route taken (possibly using a third party as a cut-out). But it's also not unheard of nowadays for people to 3D scan objects in museums surreptitiously: there was a notable brouhaha over this involving the Elgin marbles earlier this year; so that's also possible.
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Oh, I missed that. Please tell me that the "surreptitious scanner" was a state-level information terrorist -from the Greek Department of Antiquities.
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Sorry to disappoint you. It was a team led by an American lawyer from a British organisation. Grauniad article [theguardian.com].
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Fossils aren't bones, they are rocks.
I don't dispute it would be easy to tell a fossil from a cast, and that isn't the legal issue in this case anyways.
But a fossil is not the remnant of an animal, it is a naturally-produced copy. And a cast of a fossil is a copy of a copy.
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Yes, most fossils have had the mineral component of the original bones replaced by other minerals. Or the mineral component has recrystallised (the replacement of nacreous-structured aragonite in brachiopod shells by sparry calcite is truly beautiful when you're doing your required time on limestone diagenesis). But very frequently the organic component of the
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You couldn't possibly expect to fool the actual purchaser passing off a cast bone for a real one.
And yet, I highly doubt billionaires buying canvas tax writeoffs to hang on their walls to admire, are all fine art experts who could easily identify a fake Monet in their sleep.
Not every buyer/owner, is an expert. That goes doubly so for eccentric people with eccentric amounts of money spending it on eccentric shit.
As far as dino-authenticity, when skeletons go for tens of millions, I'm left questioning if someone didn't fill in the bone blanks a bit with the original Stan after reading this story. Starti
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I was thinking that, but it's not PC these days. Whether it should be is another matter. Certain nut-cases went around punching elderly Asians out of frustration over the "Wuhan flu". Seems there's in increase in nuts who crave a scapegoat to punch.
Don't tell me, (Score:1)
...some spoiled rich brat wants a "real" dino skeleton in their room. Taxem!
Shen? (Score:3)
Should have named it Theseus.
Boosted some of the parts from the Argo (Score:2)
In this instance, parts replicated from Argo were swapped into Theseus' Ship in place of OEM Theseus' Ship.
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Alternative theory: Reptilian aliens were offended (Score:2)
And while still keeping an ultra life profile they made their government liaisons aware of their displeasure.
Like the ending of Men in Black, but these aliens have mass drivers and a wicked sense of irony.
My Tea's Gone Cold (Score:2)