It's a finding that one Tyrannosaurus rex researcher calls "dispiriting and exasperating": More scientifically significant T. rex specimens are now in private or commercial hands than are owned by public museums or other public trusts. Thomas Carr, head of the Carthage Institute of Paleontology in Wisconsin, arrived at that conclusion by inventorying "scientifically informative" specimens—what Live Science refers to as "skulls, skeletons, and isolated bones that researchers would include in studies of T. rex development and variation."
Pulling from the primary literature, museum records, mainstream media, personal observation, and anecdotes, he determined there are 61 specimens in public trusts and 71 specimens held privately, though that latter number is likely an undercount due to "the secretive nature" of the private market. "Vertebrate paleontology is at a point in history where it is faced with a society that considers it acceptable to sell rare nonrenewable fossil resources as luxury items," he writes in Palaeontologia Electronica.
Carr notes that 14 of those 71 are juveniles, a fact that "carries the heaviest scientific cost" because "the early growth stages of T. rex are bedeviled by a poor fossil record." Commercial interests have unearthed more T. rex specimens since 1992 than public trusts have managed to find since 1892, per Carr, and while the commercially sourced ones do sometimes find their way into public museums (either permanently or on temporary loan), only 11% of the commercially collected T. rex fossils are in public trusts. Carr allows that some commercially obtained fossils have been scientifically studied, "but this practice contravenes scientific best practices" as it limits the reproducibility of the data and sparks concerns about long-term access to the fossils. (More T. rex stories.)
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