This Stegosaurus Skeleton Just Sold For A Record-Setting $44.6 Million
Meet “Apex,” the world’s most expensive fossil.
There’s a new king of the dinosaurs, at least from a monetary standpoint. An almost complete stegosaurus skeleton became the world’s most valuable fossil when it sold for a record-setting $44.6 million at a recent Sotheby’s auction in New York. The dinosaur skeleton, aptly named “Apex,” shocked the fine collectible brokerage when it absolutely smashed its $4 to $6-million pre-auction valuation.
The “most complete and best-preserved Stegosaurus specimen of its size ever discovered,” according to Sotheby’s, stands 11 feet tall and stretches 27 feet long from nose to tail. Of its 319 pieces, 254 are real bones, and the rest or either 3D-printed or sculpted, reports ABC News.
“Judging from the overall size and degree of the bone development it can be determined that the skeleton belonged to a large, robust adult individual, and evidence of arthritis, particularly notable in the fusion of the 4 sacral vertebrae, would indicate that it lived to an advanced age,” Sotheby’s adds. “The specimen shows no signs of combat related injuries, or evidence of post-mortem scavenging, and exhibits a number of interesting pathologies.”
“Apex” has overtaken the most-expensive-fossil record from “Stan,” a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that sold for $31.8 million at a 2020 Christie’s auction and lived 67 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period. “Apex” is considerably older, dating back between 146 million and 161 million years ago in the preceding Jurassic period. As a Stegosaurus, “Apex” is the most famous of the Thyreophorans armored dinosaurs, which are distinguished by dermal armor that extends from the neck to the tail and terminates in a multi-spiked tail weapon.
According to Sotheby’s, the specimen was discovered on privately owned land in near Dinosaur National Monument in Moffat County, Colorado, an area that’s produced several fossils. The region is located in the Morrison Formation, a sequence of Upper Jurassic sedimentary rock centered in the states of Colorado and Wyoming.
