A couple of days ago, while browsing the digital edition of the Financial Times, I read that on November 16th a dinosaur is going up for auction. The event will take place at the Château de Dampierre-en-Yvelines, in the Île‑de‑France region, between four and six in the afternoon—right in the middle of afternoon tea. Curiously, its value is estimated between four and six million dollars.

It is an apatosaurus unearthed from the Morrison Formation in Wyoming, a site famed for its rich deposits of Late Jurassic fossils. Vulcain, as it has been christened, was a rather scrawny, long‑necked herbivore that barely reached twenty‑one meters from end to end. Its genus, very close to the brontosaurus, typically measured between twenty‑two and thirty‑three meters.

Keeping a dinosaur must be difficult and expensive. There was probably a time when buying them was considered a sound investment. I suspect that today the business has shifted elsewhere—toward virtual reality, for instance. Back then, you had to see it to believe it; now, with social media, that is more than enough.

I also imagine it’s an item that circulates slowly. There aren’t exactly long lines of eager buyers. If this auction is announced a month in advance, it is so that the supposed bidders can start running their calculations—above all, figuring out where they might put it. Most likely some institution will want it, or at best an eccentric millionaire, weary of impressing visitors with the same old tricks.

After all, there can’t be that many institutions willing or able to acquire an apatosaurus missing twenty percent of its skeleton. It would be simpler to just pick up the phone and ask. An auction costs money, I imagine. Perhaps they already called everyone and poor Vulcain failed to spark anyone’s interest. As a pet, he’s a bit old. He won’t be there wagging his tail when you get home from work. And in a few months, dusting him off will be a chore. Prehistoric bones do not earn their keep.

If we were talking about a ham bone, well then… you drop it into the pot and it releases a salty, smoky depth that turns the water into broth without recourse to Christian magic. But these are not auction bones. No one has stepped forward to dismantle Vulcain and reassemble him in another château. As he is, he won’t fit through any door, neither in nor out.

Will a buyer emerge? Surely… someone who just won the lottery, a newly minted tycoon—a Russian, a Chinese, or an Arab. According to the stereotypes—which I, of course, reject—they excel at squandering fortunes. No one seems to have spared a thought for the poor apatosaurus: unearthed, scrubbed, and wired back together, only to be exhibited naked before the crowd.

Imagine, for a moment, that some clever Velociraptor of the future digs up your grandfather, wires him together with tape, and puts him up for sale at the weekend fair. Abominable.