Sold, for $44.6m. American billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and manager of the Citadel hedge fund, in July 2024 bought a stegosaurus skeleton named “Apex.” Griffin’s fortune, estimated at $35bn dollars by Forbes, gives him the means to buy what he wants. In 2020, he purchased Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting “Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump” (1982) for more than $100m. The financier, who has close ties to the Republican party, loves art as much as real estate. He’s also spent $450m to buy plots of land in Palm Beach, Florida to build a villa of almost 5,000m2. The July sale at Sotheby’s, which started at $3m, attracted nearly four million curious onlookers. The auction house Sotheby’--which is owned by the French-Israeli businessman Patrick Drahi via his Luxembourg structure--broadcasts some of its sales on Tiktok.

Since 2008 and the first sale of a tricetarops at Christie's for less than $600,000, the children of Jurassic Park have not disappeared, and the passion remains undiminished. On 16 November, the longest dinosaur ever sold will go on sale in France: Vulcan, discovered in 2018 in Wyoming in the United States, is estimated to fetch between $3m and $5m. That is, unless this other herbivore, who is over 140 million years old, catches the eye of another billionaire with a taste for interior decoration... or a keen sense of heritage preservation.

At the other end of the chain, in the still wonderful world of childhood, there are the exhibitions that are multiplying in Luxembourg, Europe and around the world. Luxexpo The Box is getting ready to host “The World of Dinosaurs” on 26 and 27 October. The exhibition features an hour and a half visit for €10, culminating in “a life-size animatronic T-Rex, measuring 13 metres long and 4.5 metres high,” says KLG Production. Hidden behind the company is a famous family in the circus world, the Klisings.

Up to €2m a year for a travelling exhibition

“Europe’s largest dinosaur exhibition,” like “Dino Expo World,” “Dino Alive” and the “Dinosaurierpark Teufelsschlucht” in Germany’s Eifel region, operates on the same business model: acquiring specimens that imitate real dinosaurs, implementing logistics and offering entertainment to different types of public, from schools to exhibition and leisure parks.

The theme park industry generates $50bn a year, and dinosaurs are a part of that, with the best example being the Jurassic Park attraction at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Travelling exhibitions or parks that use these replicas can generate significant revenue: a temporary exhibition can bring in between €500,000 and €2m in turnover in a few months, depending on the size of the city, ticket prices and marketing. These estimates are calculated on the basis of results published by famous exhibitions such as Dinosaurs in Motion or Jurassic World: The Exhibition, which brought in between 100,000 and 500,000 visitors over a few months, with ticket prices ranging from €10 to €30.

There’s nothing like a spectacular monster--now extinct--to attract children, who pull their parents by the arm, and other actors have understood this! In Sichuan, China, Gengutech has developed a range of 73 dinosaurs that customers can customise as they like. The T-Rex, Luxembourg’s star for the weekend, for example, comes in all sizes--from 1 metre to 60 metres long--and in 27 different models, which are capable of blinking their eyes, moving their mouths and other movements. The Chinese company, which refuses to give details of its prices, is able to manufacture it in just over a month.

No, for a price list, there's nothing like the American site Only Dinosaurs--which doesn’t just sell animated dinosaurs. The most expensive model in the “boutique” is a 25-metre long giant animatronic cartoon T-Rex at $32,000, designed for theme parks. There’s also the 28-metre long Animatronic Brachiosaurus for travelling exhibitions at $28,000. Prices start at $3,000.

Walk like a dinosaur...

Companies specialising in the manufacture of animatronic replicas (including dinosaurs) have a combined turnover estimated at between $200m and $300m a year. And that’s just another layer of the business: other entrepreneurs have realised that not everyone can invest €300,000 to buy 50 dinosaurs for €6,000 a piece.

Other firms like the German Dino-Rent, British Rent a Dinosaur or the Dino Experience rent out these prehistoric animals. Going one step further, Houston Dinosaurs rents out ‘walking dinosaur costumes,’ which are all the rage at birthday parties or in frenzied team-building sessions... 

The market for dinosaur-related toys and merchandise (figurines, puzzles, books, clothing) is estimated to be worth around $5bn a year, with brands such as Jurassic World generating a large part of this revenue through partnerships with toy manufacturers such as Mattel and Lego. Books about dinosaurs (fiction, non-fiction, educational books for children) continue to be a thriving segment, with annual worldwide sales estimated at over €100m.

Famous dinosaur excavation sites, such as those in Alberta (Canada) and Wyoming (USA), attract tourists from all over the world. The economic impact of dinosaur-related activities (excavations, museums, parks) in some regions even exceeds $100m per year.

This article was originally published in .