
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993                   TAG: 9310030093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: HANKSVILLE, UTAH                                LENGTH: Short

DINOMANIA GONE AMOK; DINO-DUNG NETS $4,500

There's a scene in "Jurassic Park" where Laura Dern, playing a paleobiologist, is up to her elbows in stegosaurus scat. If only she'd known how much that stuff's apparently worth.

Twenty-three pieces of fossilized dinosaur dung, scooped from around Hanksville, Utah, recently sold for $4,500 at Bonhams, a London auction house. Owner Jan Stobbe, a Dutch geologist, said the dung sold to an unidentified British buyer for 10 times as much as he thought it was worth.

Among other items sold at the auction was Stobbe's collection of fossilized dinosaur eggs, including a rare nest of ten sauropod eggs which went for $33,900.

"It's just the right time with `Jurassic Park' to get such things on the market," Stobbe said. "But even so, they're amazing prices."

- Associated Press

by CNB