Stegosaurus fossil fetches nearly $45M, setting record for dinosaur auctions

NEW YORK — The nearly complete fossilized remains of a stegosaurus fetched $44.6 million at auction on Wednesday, Sotheby’s said. The buyer was not named.

According to the auction house, the fossil, which has been named “Apex,” is considered one of the most complete ever found.

The price exceeded the pre-sale estimate of $4 to $6 million and surpassed a previous auction record for dinosaur fossils: $31.8 million for the remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Stansold in 2020.

“Apex has now taken its place in history, some 150 million years since it first roamed the planet,” said Cassandra Hatton, head of Sotheby’s science department.

The sale of dinosaur fossils frustrates academic paleontologists who believe the specimens belong in museums or research centers that cannot afford the high auction prices.

According to Sotheby’s, the unnamed buyer is an American who plans to loan Apex to an American institution. The buyer beat out six other bidders.

The stegosaurus was one of the most striking in the world dinosaurswith pointed plates on its back. Hatton called Apex “a coloring book dinosaur” because of its well-preserved features.

Apex was a large stegosaurus that was 3.3 meters (11 feet) long and 8.2 meters (27 feet) long from head to tail. It 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 near Dinosaur National Monument and the Utah border.