Defying the adage ‘let bygones be bygones,’ a nearly complete Stegosaurus skeleton sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York for a record $44.6 million. By going under the hammer for ten times its estimate of $4 million, Apex became the most expensive fossil ever auctioned. Per Sotheby’s, its new owner will loan the massive mounted Stegosaurus skeleton to an unspecified US institution. The anonymous owner unabashedly stated, “Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America!” Discovered by commercial paleontologist Jason Cooper in Moffat County, Colorado, two years ago, Apex comprises 254 bone elements. The 150-million-year-old specimen is “virtually complete and incredibly well-preserved,” according to Sotheby’s.
It marks the first time that an auction house and a paleontologist worked together from discovery to sale, documenting everything from excavation to restoration and mounting. The only other such discovery was a 67-million-year-old T. Rex skeleton nicknamed Stan, sold by Christie’s auction for $31.8 million. While Stan was 13 feet high and 40 feet long, Apex measures 11 feet tall and 27 feet long. “This particular specimen is really, really exciting because it is enormous,” said Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture, in a YouTube video. She added, “It has an incredible level of preservation. Apex lived up to its name today, inspiring bidders globally to become the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction.”
She continued, “I am thrilled that such an important specimen has now taken its place in history, some 150 million years since it roamed the planet.” The rise in skeleton sales is exciting for billionaires but not so much for paleontologists, who prefer to see these specimens as an imperative part of our natural history, not as a mantelpiece in a mansion. Not only dinosaur skeletons but in 2008, dinosaur dung was sold at a New York auction for nearly $1,000.
