A nearly 40-million-year-old skeleton belonging to what is popularly called a sabre-toothed tiger is going under the hammer next week in Geneva, a year after its discovery on a US ranch
"This fossil is exceptional, above all for its conservation: it's 37 million years old, and it's 90-percent complete," Bernard Piguet, director of the Piguet Hotel des Ventes auction house, told AFP.
"The few missing bones were remade with a 3D printer," Piguet added, with the skeleton reconstructed around a black metal frame emphasizing the merger of "the extremely old with modern technologies."
The skeleton, some 120 centimeters long, is expected to fetch between 60,000 and 80,000 Swiss francs (55,300 to 73,750 euros).
The original bones are those of a Hoplophoneus (the scientific name of this species of tigers).
"It was found in South Dakota during the last excavation season, towards the end of summer 2019," Swiss collector Yann Cuenin, who owns the dozens of paleontology lots on auction, told AFP.
