Stegosaurus Fossil Fetches Nearly $45M at Auction
The nearly complete fossilized remains of a stegosaurus fetched $44.6 million at an auction in New York on July 17, Sotheby's said. The buyer's name was not revealed.
The fossil, nicknamed "Apex," is considered to be the largest and most complete stegosaurus specimen ever found, according to the auction house.
The price blew past a pre-sale estimate of $4 million to $6 million and past a previous auction record for dinosaur fossils — $31.8 million for the remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Stan, sold in 2020.
Apex "has now taken its place in history, some 150 million years since it roamed the planet," said Cassandra Hatton, who heads Sotheby's science-related business.
Dinosaur fossil sales create some frustration among paleontologists who feel the specimens belong in museums or research centers that can't afford huge auction prices.
Sotheby's said the anonymous buyer is American and intends to look into loaning Apex to an institution in the US. After the sale the buyer said, "Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America!"
The buyer beat out six other buyers after 15 minutes of bidding.
The stegosaurus was one of the world's most distinctive dinosaurs, featuring pointy plates on its back. Hatton has called Apex "a coloring book dinosaur," for its well-preserved features.
Apex was a big stegosaurus, 3.3 meters tall and 8.2 meters nose to tail. Experts can't tell if Apex was male or female, but it lived long enough to show signs of arthritis, Sotheby's said. There was also no evidence that this plant-eating dinosaur was ever involved in a fight.
A commercial paleontologist named Jason Cooper discovered the fossil in 2022 on his property near, perhaps unsurprisingly, the town of Dinosaur, Colorado. The tiny community is near Dinosaur National Monument and the Utah border.
