Rare T-Rex skeleton to go under the hammer in Switzerland

Visitors watch the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex named Trinity, during a preview by auction house Koller at the Tonhalle Zurich concert hall, on Wednesday, March 29, 2023 in Zurich, Switzerland. The 11.6 metre long, 3.9 metre high and 67 million year old T-Rex skeleton was assembled from three specimens excavated from 2008 to 2013 in the Hell Creek and Lance Creek formations in the U.S. states of Montana and Wyoming. (Michael Buholzer/Keystone via AP)

ZURICH, Switzerland -

Millions of years after dinosaurs ruled the Earth, the skeleton of a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex was introduced to the public in Switzerland on Wednesday ahead of its auction next month.

The giant carnivore, named TRX-293 Trinity, is expected to fetch between 5 million (US$5.43 million) and 8 million Swiss francs (US$8.70 million) when it goes on sale in Zurich on April 18.

Standing 3.9 metres high and measuring 11.6 metres long, it is only the third T-Rex skeleton to be offered at auction, and the first in Europe.

"The name of this skeleton is ‘Trinity’, because it's built out of three individuals and all were found in the U.S.," said Cyril Koller, owner of the auction house conducting the sale.

The rest of the name derives from the 293 bones in its skeleton.

Koller thought a private individual would be the likely buyer, although he was sure the public would still get to see it in future.

Discoveries of T-Rex fossils are extremely rare, said Hans Jacob-Siber, a paleontologist at the Aathal Dinosaur Museum in Switzerland.

"It’s not a cast or a copy, it’s the original. And there are very few, very few," Siber told Reuters. "In fact, until about 1970 or 1980, there used to be less than a dozen Tyrannosaurus, most of them were already in United States' museums."

Almost all of the other fossilized T-Rexes are housed in museums, meaning massive interest whenever a skeleton comes up for sale.

Two other T-Rexes discovered in North America - called Sue and Stan - fetched US$8.4 million and US$31.8 million respectively when they were sold in 1997 and 2020.

(US$1 = 0.9191 Swiss francs)

Reporting by Cecile Mantovani, writing by John Revill, and editing by Christina Fincher