The most expensive fossil ever sold at auction is headed to the Big Apple.
The remains of a stegosaurus—now known as Apex—have a new home in N.Y.C’s American Museum of Natural History, where they will be displayed beginning this weekend, the Associated Press reports. The fossil, which dates back 150 million years, is on loan from billionaire owner Ken Griffin, who scored the winning $45 million bid at Sotheby’s when it was up for auction this past July.
That eye-watering price helped Apex best the previous record holder, a T-rex known as Stan, which sold for $32 million in 2020. In addition to the loan, Griffin has also given the museum permission for intense study of the specimen, including taking samples for detailed analysis.
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Aside from its record-setting price tag, Apex is scientifically significant, too, with qualities scientists rarely find in a fossil of this kind. Measuring 11 feet tall and 27 feet long, the massive skeleton has 80 percent of its 320 bones intact, making it the most complete stegosaurus ever uncovered. Scientists also believe the stegosaurus was of an advanced age when it died, something which could allow them to gain a greater understanding of how the species grew and aged over time.
“This partnership allows Apex to have pride of place at a museum world-renowned for its dinosaur collection and for its longstanding leadership in paleontology and, even more exciting, enables us to pursue specialized Stegosaurus research centered around this extraordinary and scientifically important specimen," said Sean Decatur, president of the American Museum of Natural History, said in a statement Wednesday.
Paleontologist Jason Cooper unearthed the stegosaurus near (rather fittingly) Dinosaur, Colorado, in 2022, and he dubbed the fossil “Apex" due to the creature’s dominant status during the late Jurassic period, when it roamed the earth. The dino will initially be displayed in one of the Museum of Natural History’s great atriums before being transferred to the institution’s dedicated fossil halls for long-term exhibition sometime next year.
Seems like a trip to the museum is in order.
