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Gabriele Galimberti and Juri De Luca, National Geographic Image Collection

A collector of fossil ephemera displays an Icthyosaur in his home office.

Resurrection, a sculpture of Jesus Christ made by fossil hunter and sculptor Alan Detrich. The sculpture features the partical skeleton of a mosasaur and the figure is crafted from fragmented dinosaur bones, including those of a T. rex. Detrich made headlines in 2019 for listing what was believed to be the world's only baby T. rex fossil, ’Son of Samson’, on eBay for $2.3 million.

It's not just real fossils that are the object of collectors' affections. Here, a cast of a Triceratops skull forms the centrepiece of a Louisiana home.

A collector poses with a mounted mosasaur skull. The fearsome appearance of this marine reptile – a relatively common specimen in the fossil record, and famous for its fictionally scaled-up persona in the Jurassic World films – have made them popular pieces for commercial buyers.

At the Drouot auction centre in Paris, bidders gather to make offers on an Allosaurus. Auctions such as this, many believe, are pushing up the prices of dinosaurs bought by private collectors, pricing museums and academic institutions out of the market.