Millon announces auction of rare Dubreuillosaurus skeleton in Paris

On 1 October 2026, the Paris auction house Millon announced it would sell the skeleton of Dubreuillosaurus valesdunensis, a megalosaur, a large meat-eating dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic. The fossil was put up for sale by the heirs of André Dubreuil, who found it in Normandy in 1994 and died in 2024.

The specimen is the holotype, the single reference fossil on which the species was formally described. It is considered among the best-preserved megalosaur skulls ever found, with a large share of the skull preserved. For years it had been studied by researchers and kept in a French natural history museum, but it remained in private hands.

The announcement alarmed palaeontologists. Scientists launched a petition warning that selling a unique type specimen to the highest bidder could place it beyond the reach of researchers and set a precedent for other irreplaceable fossils. The debate fed a wider argument in France and abroad over private ownership of scientifically important fossils and the booming dinosaur auction market.