Prehistory at Auction

By: Ben Holchak, Class IV

Photo Credit: Pixabay

On December 8th of last year, the American Museum of Natural History opened a new exhibition near the entrance to its Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation. On display there is Apex, the largest and most complete Stegosaurus fossil ever unearthed. 

It was discovered by commercial paleontologist Jason Cooper while walking around his property near the fittingly named town of Dinosaur, Colorado. Apex stands at an impressive 11.5 feet tall and 27 feet long. Out of about 320 bone elements, 254 have been preserved. The rest of the bones were sculpted and 3D printed, a common practice in museums when reconstructing a skeleton.

Apex was unearthed by commercial paleontologists, whose profession is often maligned in the paleontological community for being more concerned with money and less so with science. For example, the rock surrounding any fossil reveals a lot to a paleontologist about how old the fossil is and where it came from. However commercial paleontologists often don’t collect this sort of contextual data, so it remains unknown to science for certain specimens. Scientists at Apex’s new home can be thankful that contextual data was collected from the fossil’s site.

Fossils unearthed by commercial paleontologists usually go to auction, and Apex was no

exception. Apex was sold at Sotheby’s in July of 2024 to billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin, for a staggering $44.6 million. To put this into perspective, it was expected to sell for only 4 to 6 million. This makes it the most expensive fossil to ever be sold, and a signal that the market for fossils is growing rapidly. These rising prices mean that scientists are getting priced out of the market, and specimens steered away from research institutions and into private homes.

However, the rising prices of fossils may not be an entirely bad thing, especially in the case of the Apex. Jingmai O’Connor, a paleontologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, questioned the scientific value Apex had in the first place, given the abundance of partial skeletons. “With 44 million” provided “to scientists,” she remarked, “we could move forward our understanding of dinosaurs by decades.”

Whether AMNH chooses to spend its budget on lab research or by purchasing pricey and spectacular specimens–which are not, in fact, completely separate things–it will undoubtedly continue to educate and inspire. Museums, according to TBLS faculty member Mr. Castello, “allow us to learn more about who we are, where we came from, and why our world is the way it is.” Apex the Stegosaurus is just one (spectacular) piece of that puzzle.