Stegosaurus skeleton sets auction record, selling for $44.6 million

By Catherine Nicholls, CNN

(CNN) — A Stegosaurus skeleton has become the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction, being snapped up for $44.6 million in New York.

The dinosaur fossil was sold on Wednesday to an anonymous buyer after it was sought after by seven bidders, according to Sotheby’s, the auction house handling the sale.

The fossil, nicknamed “Apex,” smashed its pre-sale estimate, which was between $4 million and $6 million.

Apex was discovered on private land in Moffat County, Colorado, by commercial paleontologist Jason Cooper in 2022, Sotheby’s said in a press release.

It was preserved in hard sandstone, which protected the bones from becoming distorted, Sotheby’s added.

Measuring 11 feet tall and nearly 27 feet long from nose to tail, with 254 fossil bone elements of an approximate total of 319, indications suggest that Apex was a “large, robust adult individual,” according to the auction house.

There is also evidence that the dinosaur might have had arthritis, which could suggest that it lived to an advanced age.

Despite the obvious commercial demand for Apex, some paleontologists have argued that the fossil should be put on display in a museum instead of being sold to private bidders.

Steve Brusatte, a professor of paleontology and evolution at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh, told CNN in May that Apex was “an important dinosaur fossil,” especially since 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 educate and rouse the curiosity of so many people, just disappears into the mansion of an oligarch,” Brusatte said before the sale.

He added: “The uber-wealthy will always be able to outbid museums when a dinosaur is sold on the open market, so my hope is that if there is somebody with the means to buy a fossil like this, and this fossil captures their fancy, that they donate it to a museum.”

Sotheby’s said on Wednesday that the person who bought Apex “intends to explore loaning the specimen to a U.S. institution.”

According to the press release, the successful buyer said: “Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America.”

Wednesday’s auction was not the first to offer dinosaur fossils to commercial bidders.

According to Sotheby’s, it sold “Sue,” a Tyrannosaurus rex and the first ever dinosaur to be sold at auction, for $8.4 million in 1997.

“Stan,” another Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, was sold for $31.8 million in 2020.

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Previous reporting from CNN’s Lianne Kolirin.