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Ancient meteorite goes unsold as dung sells
Thursday, May 01, 2008 3:33PM UTC
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some dinosaur dung
was snapped up at auction in
New York even as a 4.5 billion year old
meteorite which was supposed to
top the sale went unsold.
The two chunks of 130-million-year-old
coprolite, otherwise known as
fossilized dinosaur dung, fetched $960
at Bonhams in New York on
Wednesday, the auction house said.
The Jurassic-era rocks were sold for more
than double their maximum
estimate, said spokeswoman Staci Smith.
A 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite, on which
a Chinese desert hiker
habitually ate lunch before he discovered
it was valuable, failed to meet
the minimum reserve however.
Bonhams had expected the space rock to sell
for $2.25 million to $2.75
million.
Smith said negotiations over the meteorite
continued after the auction
and that a deal could be struck in days.
The owner of the meteorite, Marvin Kilgore,
the curator at the
University of Arizona's Southwest Meteorite
Center, was mystified by the sale
of the fossilized dung which is much more
common than rocks that have
fallen from space.
"Some people want it on their shelves, I
guess," he said.
The dung was bought by a phone bidder which
the auction house declined
to identify.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, editing by
Sandra Maler)
Terri, Events Coordinator
Email: Events@PASAz.org
Phoenix Astronomical Society
