NEW YORK CITY – On October 6, “Stan,” one of the largest and most complete T. Rex skeletons ever found, achieved $31.8 million, eclipsing its estimate of $6/8 million and setting a new world auction record for any dinosaur skeleton or fossil ever sold at auction. Clearly the evening’s greatest novelty, the dinosaur skeleton proved to be a rampaging success with bidders, resulting in a price that was more than triple the high estimate of $8 million. Selling to a bidder on the phone with Christie’s London natural history and sciences specialist James Hyslop, the T. Rex easily exceeded the previous record for a dinosaur fossil of $8.4 million paid in 1997 for “Sue,” by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Endearingly named “Stan” after the paleontologist who first found the skeleton’s partially unearthed hip bones, the T. Rex is a surviving specimen from approximately 67 million years ago.

The skeleton came to auction from the Black Hills institute in South Dakota, where “Stan” had been displayed and studied for the last two decades and inspired dozens of academic articles and studies within the paleontological community. After a remounting, “Stan” was unveiled for the public on September 16 at Christie’s 20 Rockefeller Center in a first-of-its-kind extended public preview. Currently through October 21, “Stan” is fully visible 24 hours a day through Christie’s floor-to-ceiling gallery windows from the sidewalk on 49th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

The skeleton was just one of the highlights as Christie’s opened its Twentieth Century Week with a highly successful evening sale of Twentieth Century art, live streamed from New York. The sale achieved $340,851,500, selling 84 percent by lot and 96 percent by value. “Stan” was only topped by Cy Twombly’s untitled [Bolsena], 1969, which realized $38.7 million. For information, 212-636-2000 or www.christies.com.