Stegosaurus Skeleton Nabs $44.6 Million At Historic Auction In New York City

A historic auction has once again proven that dinosaurs are here to stay — even if extinct.

Sotheby’s offered an enormous stegosaurus skeleton to the highest bidder on Wednesday and, despite early projections of it fetching between $4 million and $6 million, it sold to an unnamed buyer for $44.6 million — and became the most valuable fossil ever auctioned off.

The auction house revealed on its website that the bones were found in 2022 on private land in Moffat County, Colorado, near the aptly named town of Dinosaur. The skeleton, nicknamed “Apex,” is 11 feet tall and spans nearly 27 feet from fossilized nose to ancient tail.

The herbivorous stegosaurus thrived during the late Jurassic era 145 million years ago.

Sotheby’s explained that the skeleton was excavated with 254 fossil bone elements still intact and preserved from distortion by the Colorado sandstone. The remainder of its approximately 319 bones, meanwhile, were 3D-printed to complete the skeleton.

The auction house said the “large, robust adult” specimen contained evidence of arthritis, suggesting the stegosaurus had lived a long life.

In May, one paleontologist voiced his frustration at selling such finds to wealthy elites.

“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,” Steve Brusatte, professor of paleontology and evolution at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh, told CNN at the time.

Brusatte added that as a stegosaurus, Apex was an “important dinosaur fossil” because “far fewer skeletons” of its species have been uncovered, compared to “other dinosaurs like T. rex and Triceratops.” He was optimistic in May that the stegosaurus would fall into the right hands.

“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,” he told the outlet.

While the anonymous new owner vaguely told Sotheby’s on Wednesday that “Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America,” the auction house revealed the buyer “intends to explore loaning the specimen to a U.S. institution.”