I don’t remember exactly which dinosaurs I saw when I first visited Chicago’s Field Museum as a child, but I’ll never forget the thrill of seeing the gigantic skeletons striding forth out of the past. Since then, I’ve seen many other fossilized dinos at many other museums, and the thrill remains the same.
This issue’s cover story investigates the soaring popularity of museum-quality dinosaur fossils as collectibles, with highbrow auction houses like Christie’s selling off Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons as if they’re pieces of art. As earth and climate writer Carolyn Gramling reports, Stan the T. rex, a skeleton discovered on private land in South Dakota, sold for an eye-popping $31.8