Science as art: deep time, the cosmos, expertise and collecting. We write about what we sell, at the level of those who study it.
For forty years the meteorite from a Magadan stream was considered an iron, until new expeditions found olivine in it.
The Gus skeleton sold at Sotheby’s for $50.1 million. What determines the price of a dinosaur — and how a fossil becomes an interior piece or a gift.
NWA 16788 — the largest piece of Mars on Earth — sold for $5.3 million. How scientists recognise Martian rocks and why a meteorite is a gift that will never be repeated.
A private collector bought the skeleton for $44.6 million — and gave it to a museum. How private collections become public, and what this means for the market.
Estimate: about $6 million; result: $30.5 million. Why the only juvenile Ceratosaurus fetched five times the expectations, and how to choose a skeleton for the home.
One of the most studied falls in history: what exploded over Chelyabinsk, where the 654 kg fragment came from, and how to choose a piece of your own.
Length, curve, colour, condition: how to choose a mammoth tusk, how it differs from elephant ivory, and where it belongs in the home.
Pallasites: the core–mantle boundary of a shattered protoplanet. What exactly we hold when we hold the Seymchan meteorite.
Why a 16-centimetre tooth costs dozens of times more than a 7-centimetre one — and how the market for the ocean’s apex predator works.
The last great terrestrial ecosystem: mammoths, rhinoceroses, cave bears and sabre-toothed cats on one prairie — and why it vanished.
Composites, painted enamel, “assembled” skeletons: what to look for before buying a fossil.
Five signs used to verify the provenance of a fossil or a meteorite.
A trilobite before and after preparation: why a specimen’s chief value is created not in the dig but under the microscope.
Seymchan, Sikhote-Alin, Dronino, Chinge and lunar meteorites: a brief guide to stones older than the Earth.
A hundred million years ago a river flowed through the Moroccan Sahara, where Spinosaurus hunted. A guide to one of the most dangerous ecosystems of the Cretaceous.
From the Medici Kunstkammern to private galleries: how a contemporary natural history collection is built and where to begin.
Once a month: new objects before publication, journal essays and invitations to expeditions.
