Market dispatch·Paris
Only Dubreuillosaurus Ever Found Heads to Drouot as Scientists Warn a Sale Could Bury a Species
The only known specimen of Dubreuillosaurus valesdunensis, a 167-million-year-old French dinosaur, goes under the hammer at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris on 18 November, estimated at €280,000–€390,000. Palaeontologists are petitioning to stop the sale of the holotype, the reference fossil for the whole species, while the Millon auction house says the sale is legal and the fossil could still be lent to museums.
The only known specimen of a dinosaur species discovered in Normandy will be auctioned in Paris on 18 November, in a sale that has alarmed palaeontologists around the world. The fossil, Dubreuillosaurus valesdunensis, is expected to fetch between €280,000 and €390,000 when the Millon auction house offers it at the Hôtel Drouot. It is a holotype, the single reference specimen used to decide whether other fossils belong to the species, and researchers say no dinosaur holotype has ever been sold at auction before.
It was found in 1994 by André Dubreuil, mayor of the small town of Conteville, who spotted bone fragments and teeth in a quarry on land he had recently bought. A team from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris then excavated the site, uncovering a jaw in 1998 and more than 2,000 fragments over four further field seasons. The team named it in 2005: a 167-million-year-old juvenile carnivore, about nine feet long. Dubreuil lent the fossil to museums for years until his death in 2024, after which his heirs decided to sell it.
Scientists have campaigned against the sale since it was announced last month. Marie-Béatrice Forel, the Paris museum's chief scientist for palaeontological collections, says a holotype should never be auctioned because the species would lose its scientific reference point. A petition to boycott the auction has gathered more than 4,000 signatures, and a fund set up by the French Palaeontological Association to buy the fossil has so far raised only about $16,000. Colleagues warn a private buyer could lock it away from researchers.
The auction house says the sale is lawful under French law, because the fossil was found on Dubreuil's private property and ownership was never transferred to a museum. It notes the specimen has been privately owned and lent to museums for nearly 30 years, and argues a new owner could continue that tradition, citing the Apex stegosaurus, sold for $44.6 million and now on loan to the American Museum of Natural History. The dispute comes in a year when two other dinosaurs, a T. rex and a Nanotyrannus, each sold for more than $45 million.
