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NEW YORK – The nearly complete fossilized remains of a stegosaurus fetched $44.6 million at auction on Wednesday, Sotheby’s said. The name of the buyer has not been disclosed.
The fossil, called “Apex”, is considered to be among the most complete ever found, according to the auction house.
The price surpassed a presale estimate of $4 million to $6 million and surpassed 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 business.
Read more: How “Lucy” became such a famous fossil
The sale of dinosaur fossils raises some frustration among academic paleontologists who feel that the specimens belong to museums or research centers that cannot afford huge auction prices.
Sotheby’s said the anonymous buyer is American and intends to review the Apex loan to an institution in the United States. The buyer beat out six other bidders.
The stegosaurus was one of the most distinctive dinosaurs in the world, with pointed plates on its back. Hatton called Apex “a coloring book dinosaur,” for its well-preserved features.
Eleven feet (3.3 meters) tall and 27 feet (8.2 meters) nose to tail, Apex was a large stegosaur that lived long enough to show signs of arthritis, Sotheby’s said.
A commercial paleontologist named Jason Cooper discovered the fossil in 2022 on his property near, perhaps unsurprisingly, the town of Dinosaur, Colorado. The small community is close to Dinosaur National Monument and the Utah border.
