The Dinosaur Artist: obsession, betrayal, and the quest for Earth's ultimate trophy

New Yorker magazine staff writer Paige Williams delves into the riveting and perilous world of fossil collectors in this true tale of one Florida man's attempt to sell a dinosaur skeleton from Mongolia.

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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 on display in a Manhattan event space had been unearthed in Mongolia, 10,000 kilometres away. At 2.4 metres high and 7.3 metres long, the specimen was spectacular, and when the gavel sounded the winning bid was over $1 million.


Eric Prokopi, a 38-year-old Floridian, was the man who had brought this extraordinary skeleton to market. A one-time swimmer who had spent his teenage years diving for shark teeth, Prokopi's singular obsession with fossils fuelled a thriving business, hunting for, preparing, and selling specimens to clients ranging from natural-history museums to avid private collectors like actor Leonardo DiCaprio.


But there was a problem. This time, facing financial strain, had Prokopi gone too far? As the T. bataar went to auction, a network of paleontologists alerted the government of Mongolia to the eye-catching lot. An international custody battle ensued, with Prokopi watching as his own world unravelled.


The Dinosaur Artist is a stunning work of narrative journalism about humans' relationship with natural history, and about a seemingly intractable conflict between science and commerce. A story that stretches from Florida's Land O' Lakes to the Gobi Desert, The Dinosaur Artist 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, and enthusiast and opportunist can easily blur.


In her first book, Paige Williams has given readers an irresistible story that spans continents, cultures, and millennia as she examines the question of who, ultimately, owns the past.