The French government has agreed to acquire a 167-million-year-old dinosaur fossil for a Paris museum, preserving public and research access to the only known specimen of its species.
The Culture Ministry and the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Space announced the agreement Nov. 9. Auction house Millon represented the owners. Its catalogue for Hôtel Drouot listed Nov. 18 for the planned auction and an estimate of €250,000 to €350,000. The Culture Ministry announcement did not state the purchase price.
The Service des musées de France led negotiations. The National Museum of Natural History, an exceptional grant from the Culture Ministry’s Fonds du patrimoine and support from the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Space are contributing to the acquisition.
The fossil belongs to Dubreuillosaurus valesdunensis, a carnivorous theropod related to megalosaurs. The Culture Ministry identifies it as the species’ holotype, the reference specimen used to define a species. It says the skull is unusually complete and well preserved among European theropod finds.
André Dubreuil, then mayor of Conteville, discovered the fossil in 1994. Museum, research center and university teams later excavated it, according to the Culture Ministry. Paleontologists Ronan Allain and Julien Benoit wrote before the agreement that “If Dubreuillosaurus disappeared into a private collection, this reference would be lost to science,” in a statement translated from French.
The Centre for Research in Paleontology–Paris says the fossil was deposited in the museum’s collections in 1998 without being formally donated. It was displayed at the Paléospace in Villers-sur-Mer from 2014. After Dubreuil died in late 2024, his heirs could reclaim and sell the specimen, the center said.
The fossil is expected to join the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes. The gallery is scheduled to reopen in summer 2027, when the dinosaur is due to be unveiled. CT scans are also planned to support further study and a new biomechanical reconstruction of the dinosaur.
