DiCaprio, Cage: Bone matters

Hulett, Wyoming, July 29: The bidding war between the two Hollywood stars was intense as the price soared for the 67 million-year-old dinosaur skull.

Only when it reached $276,000 did Leonardo DiCaprio blink — and Nicolas Cage walked away from the Beverley Hills auction with a ferocious-looking addition to his fossil collection.

As this recent battle of the celebrities for the head of a tyrannosauras bataar — the Asian cousin of T-rex — proved, dinosaur bones are emerging as the new, collectible must-haves for the multi-millionaires of Hollywood, Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

DiCaprio may have lost out last time, but he will have further chances to bid for a dinosaur of his own later this year when both IM Chait, the same Beverley Hills auctioneer, and Bonhams & Butterfields put a mosasaurus on the block.

The skeletons of the two 20-feet-long, 65 million-year-old aquatic predators are expected to fetch between $150,000 and $400,000.

“Dinosaur bones and all sorts of fossils are increasingly hot right now. Hollywood heavy-hitters and the mega-rich types from the Middle East love this stuff,” said Josh Chait, operations director of the family firm.

“When you already have a Warhol or a Monet on the wall, you tend to want a change from traditional artwork and people are turning to natural history for that.”

Ron Howard, the Oscar-winning director of a string of films including A Beautiful Mind, is said to be a dinosaur aficionado while Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft chief and amateur paleontologist, is another high profile collector.

Cage had previously dipped into the market with purchases of trilobites, creatures that evolved in the seas 570 million years ago, long before dinosaurs ruled the earth.

IM Chait and Bonhams, which are catering to the demand for fossils as an exciting and unusual new investment, say their client lists include a slew of Hollywood A-listers, captains of industry, moguls and even royalty.

Dino-mania is also sweeping the online bidding site eBay, where buyers can purchase everything from prehistoric teeth to skeletons. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, the price of a triceratops skull in good condition has soared 10-fold over the last decade to $250,000.

And American museums, which remain overwhelmingly the biggest buyers of dinosaur bones, have also joined the frenzy as they strengthen their natural history displays — partly to counter the creationist claims, pushed as an alternative to the theory of evolution by some on the religious Right.