Large ImageThe Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy
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This New York Times Notable Book recounts the true story of a Florida man's attempt to sell a dinosaur skeleton from Mongolia.
In 2012, a New York auction catalogue boasted an unusual offering: "a superb Tyrannosaurus skeleton." In fact, Lot 49135 consisted of a nearly complete T. bataar, a close cousin to the most famous animal that ever lived. The fossils now on display in a Manhattan event space had been unearthed in Mongolia, more than six,zero miles away. At eight-feet high and twenty-four feet long, the specimen was spectacular, and when the gavel sounded the winning bid was over $1 million.
Eric Prokopi, a thirty-eight-year-old Floridian, was the man who had brought this extraordinary skeleton to market. A onetime swimmer who spent his teenage years diving for shark teeth, Prokopi's singular obsession with fossils fueled a thriving business hunting, preparing, and selling specimens, to clients ranging from natural history museums to avid private collectors like actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
But as the T. bataar went to auction, a network of paleontologists alerted the government of Mongolia to the eye-catching lot, resulting in an international custody battle, and unraveling Prokopi's world.
Paige Williams's The Dinosaur Artist is a stunning work of narrative journalism about humans' relationship with natural history and a seemingly intractable conflict between science and commerce. A story that stretches from Florida's Land O' Lakes to the Gobi Desert, it illuminates the history of fossil collecting -- a murky, sometimes risky business, populated by eccentrics and obsessives, where the lines between poacher and hunter, collector and smuggler, enthusiast and opportunist, can easily blur.
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