The almost complete fossilized stays of a Stegosaurus fetched $44.6 million at auction on Wednesday, Sotheby’s said. The name of the customer was not disclosed.
The fossil, named “Apex,” is taken into account one of the complete ever found, based on the auction house.
The price exceeded the estimate of $4 to $6 million and the previous auction record for dinosaur fossils – $31.8 million for the stays of a Tyrannosaurus Rex nicknamed Stansold in 2020.
Apex “has now taken its place in history, some 150 million years after it roamed the planet,” said Cassandra Hatton, who heads Sotheby’s science-related business.
The sale of dinosaur fossils has frustrated academic paleontologists, who say the specimens belong in museums or research centers that can’t afford high auction prices.
According to Sotheby’s, the anonymous buyer is an American who desires to explore the potential for lending Apex to an establishment within the USA. The buyer beat out six other bidders.
The Stegosaurus was one of the striking dinosaurwith sharp plates on its back. Hatton has called Apex “a coloring book dinosaur” because of its well-preserved features.
Standing 3.3 meters tall and eight.2 meters long from nose to tail, Apex was a big stegosaurus that lived long enough to indicate signs of arthritis, Sotheby’s said.
A industrial paleontologist named Jason Cooper discovered the fossil in 2022 on his property near the town of Dinosaur, Colorado. The small community is near Dinosaur National Monument and the Utah border.
