Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio Fight Over A Dinosaur Skull

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Aug 1st 2007 at 11:02AM

We already knew Nicolas Cage was spendy, Ferraris, his own Bahamian island and a Bavarian castle have been among his legendary purchases. But this week saw a bidding war between Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio over a dinosaur skull. The Daily Telegraph reports that the two stars locked horns at a Beverly Hills auction over a 67 million-year-old dinosaur skull. Cage eventually won, for $276,000.

The article in the Telegraph goes on to chronicle the hot trend in all sorts of dino artifacts reporting that other dinosaur collectors include director Ron Howard and Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft chief and amateur paleontologist. Like art prices, the prices of fossils have had a steady uptick over the past ten years. This has been good news for the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, a commercial fossil company which has been involved in a variety of excavations including two Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons. The Great Plains area has yielded a variety of fossils and dinosaur bones.

In Italy, Greece and other European countries, some farmers have occasionally supplemented their incomes with finds from their land. The same seems to be true for some farmers in the US with dinosaur bones. For some, finding the bones can be a windfall in a time when drought has plagued the land. The article tells the story of Bucky Derflinger, from South Dakota who managed to buy a 4,000-acre cattle range with his share of the money from finding dinosaurs on his father's land. So perhaps in some very roundabout way, Cage and the other celebs snatching up dino remains at exorbitant prices are actually helping American farmers.

Tags: artifacts, auction, dinosaurs, leonardo dicaprio, nicolas cage, NicolasCage, skulls