The largest and most complete fossil stegosaurus specimen ever unearthed was sold by Sotheby’s for $44.6 million yesterday (July 17), two years after its accidental discovery in Colorado’s Morrison Formation. The “finest stegosaurus to appear at auction,” according to the auction house, it attracted seven determined bidders during the live Natural History sale, eventually selling to hedge-fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin for a staggering eleven times its presale low estimate.
Nicknamed “Apex” for both its size and significance, the 150-million-year-old fossil measures eleven feet tall and twenty feet long and is 30 percent larger than the Stegosaurus fossil “Sophie” in London’s Natural History Museum that was previously the most complete example of the species. Apex is also now the most expensive dinosaur fossil ever sold, beating out the T. rex named “Stan,” which sold at Christie’s in 2020 for $31.8 million to Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism.
Following the sale, Sotheby’s reported that Griffin, who intends to explore loaning the specimen to a domestic museum or research institution, said, “Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America!” The billionaire’s Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund has previously supported paleontological research and related educational initiatives. In 2016, he gave $5.5. million to fund the traveling exhibition “Antarctic Dinosaurs,” and in 2017, he gave a $16.5 million gift to Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History to create a new gallery for “Sue” the T. rex along with a touchable cast of the fossil skeleton of a patagotitan mayorum (a giant herbivore from Argentina).
Though there is little evidence Apex suffered combat or predator-related injuries, the fossilized skeleton does show signs of arthritis, which means the stegosaurus likely lived to an “advanced age,” according to Sotheby's. The virtually complete specimen has 247 fossil bone elements and was sold with additional 3D-printed elements informed by the fossil. To boost transparency and promote further research and education, Griffin will also receive a copy of the dinosaur’s scan data and a full license to utilize that data for research, molding and any other purpose he sees fit.
Apex was discovered in May of 2022 on the private land of Jason Cooper, the commercial paleontologist who founded the Trilobites of America lab and is co-owner of the Dinosaur Corporation, which supplies replica fossils to museums and scientific institutions. He stumbled upon Apex’s femur while walking around his property in Moffat County, Colorado, near the aptly named town of Dinosaur. What’s particularly interesting about the sale is that it marks the first instance of an auction house collaborating on the sale of a dinosaur skeleton from its discovery through its unearthing, restoration and mounting. Cooper, who has previously donated several specimens found on his land to institutions around the globe, worked with Sotheby’s in 2022 for the excavation, which was documented by Sotheby’s specialist Cassandra Hatton.
The practice of auctioning off dinosaur skeletons has inspired mixed reactions in the world of academic paleontology, with some experts arguing that the high price tags associated with such rare specimens renders them inaccessible to research institutions and museums. The 2022 Sotheby’s sale of a Gorgosaurus skeleton, for example, saw the fossil go to a private buyer for $6.1 million; the same amount was shelled out by an anonymous buyer for a Tyrannosaurus rex skull offered up by the auction house later that year. Christie's notably sold an incomplete fossil deinonychus nicknamed “Hector,” for $12.4 million to a private collector. “When they go into private hands, they may disappear, and we may never be able to study them as scientists,” Lawrence Witmer, a paleontologist and professor at Ohio University, told the Observer in 2022. In the case of Apex, however, it looks like
