On July 10, 2024, people viewed an almost complete Stegosaurus fossil at Sotheby's auction house in New York.
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Billionaire investor Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of hedge fund Citadel, purchased a late Jurassic Stegosaurus skeleton for $44.6 million at Sotheby's on Wednesday , becoming the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction.
The 150-million-year-old Stegosaurus named “Apex” is 11 feet tall and nearly 27 feet long from nose to tail. It is an almost complete skeleton with 254 fossilized bone elements. Apex is expected to sell for only about $6 million.
Griffin competed for 15 minutes against six other bidders at a live auction in New York on Wednesday before winning. He plans to explore loaning the specimen to U.S. institutions, people familiar with the matter said.
“Apex was born in the United States and will stay in the United States!” Griffin said after the sale.
Sotheby's said Apex showed no signs of combat-related injuries and there was no autopsy evidence. The Stegosaurus was unearthed on private land in Moffat County, Colorado.
In 2018, Griffin donated $16.5 million to Chicago's Field Museum to fund the display of a touchable model of the largest dinosaur ever discovered, a giant long-necked herbivore from Argentina.
In 2021, he purchased the first copy of the U.S. Constitution for $43.2 million, outbidding a group of cryptocurrency investors. He later loaned it to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas.