A hedge-fund billionaire has purchased a nearly complete stegosaurus skeleton dubbed “Apex” for $44.6 million. Confirmed first by The Wall Street Journal, founder and CEO of Citadel LLC Ken Griffin paid about ten times Sotheby’s pre-sale estimate of somewhere between $4 and $6 million. His purchase marks the most money ever paid for dinosaur fossils—and is not without controversy.
First announced on July 10, the auction house described roughly the 150-million-year-old remains as “the finest Stegosaurus skeleton to ever come to market.” Discovered in 2022 by a commercial paleontologist in Colorado, Apex includes 254 of its total 319 fossil bone elements. At 11-feet-tall and 27-feet-long from nose to tail, the ancient animal was large for its species, and even lived long enough to develop arthritis, according to Sotheby’s.
[Related: Ancient Stegosaurus relatives wandered across the Scottish highlands.]
“Professionally prepared, and accurately articulated anatomically, the skeleton is mounted in an aggressive attack pose on a custom steel armature,” reads Apex’s official lot description, which adds “the specimen was meticulously prepared to the highest standards” to showcase its “natural beauty” and “important contextual information” like fossilized skin impressions and three pieces of throat armor known as ossicles.
Apex’s final sales price is well beyond the previous $31.8 million fossil auction record set in 2020 by “Stan,” a Tyrannosaurus rex. But such auctions are drawing increasing criticism and scrutiny within the scientific community.
“$44.6 million for a stegosaurus? Sorry, the paleontologists around me are laughing,” Jingmai O’Connor, a paleontologist at Chicago’s Field Museum, told The New York Times on Wednesday. At least one other paleontologist declined an invitation to examine the skeleton because they didn’t want to promote a specimen that could be sold to a commercial buyer.
The lucrative collector’s market for dinosaur bones often makes it very difficult for institutions like museums, universities, and other expert organizations to financially compete with wealthy, private purchasers. Meanwhile, critics have repeatedly accused auction houses like Sotheby’s of wildly overinflating the presale estimates of recent remains in the hopes of netting another massive profit after 2020’s then record-setter, Stan, which is currently located at a natural history museum in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
In 2022, for example, Sotheby’s estimated a T. rex skull would sell for between $15 and $20 million, only to ultimately auction for $6.1 million. That same year, Christie’s was forced to withdraw a separate T. rex skeleton named “Shen” estimated at $25 million after researchers argued the claims for its supposed completeness were misleading. Although remains as complete as Apex are extremely rare, the amount of partial remains available to the scientific community also casts doubt on its potential research importance.The WSJ reports Apex’s new owner and frequent Republican Party donor intends to lend the skeleton to a US museum.
“Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America,” Griffin said after the sale.