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Citadel hedge fund founder Ken Griffin paid $44.6 million for a 150-million-year-old stegosaurus known as “Apex,” making it the most expensive fossil ever sold at auction.
of fossil The 11-foot-tall, 27-foot-long statue surpassed its pre-sale low estimate by more than 11 times, New York auction house Sotheby’s said Wednesday.
The bidder is officially anonymous, but a person familiar with Griffin’s plans confirmed the purchase and said he intends to put it on display in a museum in the U.S. “Apex was born in America and it intends to stay in America,” Griffin told the auction house, which was quoted in a press release about the sale.
This isn’t Griffin’s first time taking on a dinosaur. In 2018, he Gave Griffin has donated $16.5 million to the Field Museum in Chicago to fund a display of a model of the Argentine herbivore titanosaur, the largest dinosaur ever discovered. Paid $43.2 million In 2021, he purchased a copy of the U.S. Constitution and loaned it to the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas.
The specimen sold Wednesday was discovered in Dinosaur, Colorado and is in nearly intact condition. The stegosaurus is thought to have lived a long life and showed signs of arthritis.
Wednesday’s auction is Growing interest the challenges of fossil collecting and the high prices buyers are willing to pay for some of the most impressive fossils sold to private collectors.
The first dinosaur sold at auction was the Tyrannosaurus rex “Sue” at Sotheby’s in 1997. The fossil sold for $8.4 million and is now on display at the Field Museum. A male Tyrannosaurus rex named “Stan” was sold at Christie’s in 2020 for $31.8 million to the Abu Dhabi government, who donated it to the country’s new museum.
The fossil attracted the attention of several celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicolas Cage, who competed for the dinosaur skull, with Cage eventually winning the bid, but years later, he returned it after investigators determined it had been obtained illegally.
The Apex was the centerpiece of Sotheby’s natural history auction, which featured fossils, meteorites, Paleolithic tools and other items and drew thousands of visitors.
Sotheby’s documented the discovery, preparation and installation of Apex with commercial paleontologist Jason Cooper, who unearthed the fossil two years ago on his property in Moffat County, Colorado, which Sotheby’s says is the richest source of dinosaur fossils in the United States because it lies in Upper Jurassic sedimentary rocks.
Cooper has also discovered several other dinosaur specimens in the United States.
Other items up for auction at the same time included a set of Neanderthal tools that sold for $22,800 and a lunar meteorite that sold for $40,800 — both more than four times their high estimates. Sotheby’s auction house said seven bidders were interested in Apex.
“Apex lived up to its name today, inspiring bidders from around the world and becoming the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction,” Cassandra Hutton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture, said in a statement. The identity of the buyer was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
