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giant-ground-sloth
This 11-foot-tall relic of North America's megafauna-filled past could be yours for around half a million dollars, if you manage to outbid all the other sloth-obsessed tycoons.
Sloths aren't your thing? Then perhaps you'd prefer to spend $2.8 million on a set of two dinosaurs. Or $875,000 for a meteorite. Or $60,000 on a giant elephant bird egg.
More than 260 lots of fossils, minerals and other treasures, including the world's largest shark jaw, will be up for bids June 12 in Dallas in one of the biggest natural history auctions ever. Heritage Auctions, which is holding the event, estimates the total worth of the items for sale at around $13 million.
The lots are all on display to the public June 9-12, but if you're not in Dallas, here's a preview of some of the biggest, rarest, costliest and most beautiful items of the bunch.
Photos and captions courtesy of Heritage Auctions
Above:
Giant Ground Sloth
Eremotherium laurillardi 180,000 to 550,000 years old Daytona Bone Bed, Daytona Beach, Florida Estimated Value: $450,000 This completely mounted skeleton is the sister specimen to the skeleton currently on display at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach, Florida. Both sloth skeletons were initially prepared by technicians at the Royal Ontario Museum, and some missing elements were provided by them in the form of casts or real bones from other individuals so that Don Serbousek, one of the amateur paleontologists who discovered them, would have a complete skeleton to mount. Over 80 percent of the original bones are present in this specimen. The skeleton mount was completed in November, 2010, only three months after Mr. Serbousek's death at the age of 83. As mounted, this skeleton measures 15 feet in length from head to tail and stands 11 feet tall from the floor. It measures 5 feet wide across the hips, with the massive skull measuring 28 inches long by 14 inches wide by 15 inches tall. There are only three other known complete skeletons of these giant sloths mounted in museums around the world: one in the MOAS at Daytona Beach, Florida; one in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and one in the British Museum of Natural History, London.Images and captions courtesy of Heritage Auctions.
See Also:- Want Your Own Dinosaur? Place Your Bids
