Sotheby's Sells Stegosaurus Skeleton for Record $44.6 Million to Ken Griffin

Jul 18, 2024, 01:56 AM

Sotheby's has set a new record for the most expensive dinosaur fossil sold at auction. The nearly complete skeleton of a stegosaurus, nicknamed 'Apex', fetched $44.6 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York. The fossil, estimated to be 150 million years old, is the largest and most complete stegosaurus skeleton ever discovered. Discovered in 2022 on private land near the Utah/Colorado border, it was initially expected to sell for between $4 million and $6 million, but the final sale price far exceeded these estimates, reaching more than 11 times the presale low estimate. The buyer was revealed to be hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel. This sale marks the highest price ever paid for a fossil at auction, surpassing previous records held by other dinosaur skeletons.