Fossil

Appearing at Adam Partridge’s Devon saleroom this September is a truly exciting discovery. A finely preserved and virtually complete Ichthyosaur, dug up in Charmouth, is being offered for the first time at an estimate of £10,000-15,000.

Apatosaurus known as 'Vulcain' is to be offered at auction in Paris in November

A bronze statue created through 3D scanning the skeleton of a juvenile T-rex has been installed in London by antiquities specialist David Aaron.

The first ever complete Gorgosaurus skeleton is to be offered at auction by Sotheby’s.

The largest triceratops skeleton ever discovered has been sold in France by Binoche et Giquello.

The fossilised remains of 'Big John', the largest triceratops dinosaur ever discovered, will be offered by Paris auction house Binoche et Giquello next month.

A complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton was hammered down at $27.5m (£21.3m) at Christie’s New York.

A 155m-year-old one-of-a-kind diplodocus skeleton has been moved from the shale beds of Wyoming to Heathrow Terminal Five, a stopover on its way to auction in France.

Three bidders – one French, one Japanese and one Swedish – did battle for half an hour in the chase to acquire the skeleton of a new species of carnivorous dinosaur at a Paris auction this month.

A rare complete mammoth skeleton from Siberia dating from the late Pleistocene era sold for a hammer price of €430,000 (£380,530) in a sale held by Aguttes in Lyons.

This remarkable fossil of one of the largest animals ever to have walked the Earth becomes the first large dinosaur skeleton to be offered at auction in the UK at Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst, West Sussex, on November 27.

Scrimshaw, or carved bone and ivory, is very collectable, but the signature and scenes on this 7in (18cm) long whale’s tooth put it in a special league.

FOSSILS, whose decorative qualities in either antique or contemporary settings, have made them a regular feature of Sotheby’s garden sales at Billingshurst, opened the May event with 100 lots. Although dealers have become interested in the genre (there are, for example, now stands selling natural history at Olympia), private buyers took the top offerings including the best seller, a detail of which is shown right.

With the antiquities market suffering from high prices and criminal scandals and a shortage of good material, it is no real surprise that collectors have turned to natural, as opposed to man-made, artefacts of greater age and, arguably, equal beauty.