Christie's cancels controversial T-rex auction in Hong Kong

The T-rex skeleton 'Stan' is seen on display in New York City in 2020

Visitors take pictures of the T-rex skeleton named 'Shen' in Singapore

Christie's has called off the auction of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, the auction house told AFP on Monday, days before it was due to go under the hammer in Hong Kong.

The cancellation came after an American fossil company raised doubts about parts of the skeleton named "Shen", The New York Times reported on Sunday.

"The consignor has now decided to loan the specimen to a museum for public display," it said.

Its auction would have followed the sale of another T-rex skeleton named "Stan" by Christie's for $31.8 million in 2020.

Most frames on display use casts of bones to complete the skeleton. The Field Museum estimates the number of bones in a T-rex at 380.

The controversy was sparked when Peter Larson, president of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in the United States, told The New York Times that parts of Shen looked similar to Stan.

Larson told the newspaper that it seemed to him that Shen's owner -- not identified by Christie's -- used bones from a Stan replica to complete the skeleton.

Sales of such skeletons have raked in tens of millions of dollars in recent years, but experts have described the trade as harmful to science as the auctions could put them in private hands and out of the reach of researchers.

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