Stegosaurus skeleton fossil sells for record $44 million at auction
A 150-million-year-old, 20-foot-long Stegosaurus skeleton that is nearly complete sold at an auction for a record $44.6 million on Wednesday.
A 150-million-year-old, nearly complete Stegosaurus skeleton sold for a record $44.6 million at auction Wednesday.
Sotheby’s, which handled the sale in New York, described the fossil as the “most complete” and “best preserved” Stegosaurus specimen of its size ever discovered. The huge skeleton, measuring 11 feet tall and 20 feet long, was nicknamed “Apex.”
The dinosaur remains were estimated to fetch up to $6 million, but the sale far exceeded those expectations. It set a world record price for a fossil at auction after a bidding war that lasted more than 15 minutes, according to Anna Tisi, a representative for Sotheby’s.
Sotheby’s did not publicly disclose the buyer’s identity, but The Wall Street Journal later reported that it was billionaire Kenneth Griffin, the CEO of the hedge fund Citadel.
The Apex skeleton was unearthed in 2022 by Jason Cooper, a commercial paleontologist, on his private land near the town of Dinosaur in Moffat County, Colorado, according to Sotheby’s. The bones were in the Morrison Formation, an expanse of sedimentary rock centered in Colorado and Wyoming that also extends into parts of 11 other states.
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