The Bone Rush
July 21, 2026 at 06:30PMDinosaur skeletons are “coveted by the ultrarich,” Devon Pendleton writes, “not unlike sports franchises or Fabergé eggs.” And none are more coveted than those of the Tyrannosaurus rex; “It’s the best trophy kind of thing you could own,” boasts one proud owner. In recent years, a few T. rex specimens—named Shen, Titus, Peter, and, in two cases, Barbara—have come under scrutiny for their resemblance to others, or have otherwise had their integrity questioned. Pendleton examines a complicated market, a few contested specimens, and the man whose name keeps surfacing in relation to them.
Perhaps Jenkins had simply gotten in over his head while trying to create order and erect guardrails in an opaque market rife with profiteers and slippery characters. He described himself as a philanthropist and benefactor in paleontology, yet he had a pattern of leveraging NDAs and threatening legal letters to silence anyone from so much as mentioning him in connection to a T. rex. His T. rexes would all go to charity, he said, yet impugning them would cause as much as $100 million in damages, according to letters his attorneys have sent to journalists, academics and researchers. Some of the more experienced collectors now refer to Jenkins as Voldemort. More than a dozen people who’ve worked with him either declined to speak with Businessweek, citing confidentiality agreements, or didn’t respond to calls and emails. An additional 23 agreed only to speak anonymously for fear of retribution.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2026/07/21/t-rex-fossil-collection-barbara-peter-shen-stan/
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