Sotheby’s
“Apex,” the skeleton of an adult Stegosaurus, sold at auction for $44.6 million.
CNN
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The skeleton of a Stegosaurus is the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction, selling for $44.6 million in New York.
According to Sotheby’s, the auction house handling the sale, the dinosaur fossil was sold to an anonymous buyer on Wednesday, with seven bidders seeking the specimen.
The fossil, nicknamed “Apex,” exceeded its pre-sale estimate, which was between $4 million and $6 million.
Apex was discovered in 2022 on private property in Moffat County, Colorado, by commercial paleontologist Jason Cooper, Sotheby’s said in a press release.
It was preserved in hard sandstone, which protected the bones from deformation, Sotheby’s added.
Sotheby’s
Apex is 3.35 meters high and almost 8.25 meters long from nose to tail.
At 3.3 metres tall and nearly 8.2 metres long from nose to tail, With 254 fossil bone elements out of a total of about 319, evidence suggests Apex was a “large, robust adult individual,” the auction house said.
There is also evidence that the dinosaur may have had arthritis, which could indicate it lived to a ripe old age.
Despite the clear commercial demand for Apex, some paleontologists believe the fossil should be displayed in a museum rather than sold to private bidders.
Steve Brusatte, a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, told CNN in May that Apex was “an important dinosaur fossil,” especially because there are “far fewer good (Stegosaurus) skeletons than other famous dinosaurs like T. rex and Triceratops.”
“It is a great shame when a fossil like this, which could have aroused and educated the curiosity of so many people, simply disappears into the home of an oligarch,” Brusatte said before the auction.
Sotheby’s
According to Sotheby’s, Apex became the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction.
He added: “The super-rich will always be able to outbid museums when a dinosaur is sold on the open market, so I would hope that if there is someone with the means to buy a fossil like this, and it catches their eye, they will donate it to a museum.”
Sotheby’s said Wednesday that the person who bought Apex “intends to loan the item to a U.S. institution.”
According to the press release, the successful buyer said, “Apex was born in America and will remain in America.”
Wednesday’s auction was not the first in which dinosaur fossils were offered to commercial bidders.
According to Sotheby’s, in 1997, “Sue,” a Tyrannosaurus rex and the first dinosaur ever sold at auction, sold for $8.4 million.
“Stan,” another Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, sold for $31.8 million in 2020.