Wednesday in New York, someone bought a dinosaur. Well, what’s left of one. 

At an auction house called Sotheby’s, a buyer bought a stegosaurus fossil. For $44.6 million. The fossil is named Apex. It’s the most expensive dino fossil ever sold. 

Before the sale, people thought Apex might go for a cheap $4 million. 

A Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Stan is the second most expensive fossil. Stan sold for nearly $32 million in 2020. 

Apex is one of the best-preserved fossils anyone has found. Not everyone is pleased to see it auctioned. Many fossil experts think such treasures belong in museums.

Who is Apex’s buyer? That remains a secret for now. We know the buyer is American. That person may loan Apex to an institution in the United States. So it might end up in a museum after all!

You’ve probably seen a picture of a stegosaurus. It’s the one with fin-like spikes along its back. That tail was probably for protection. These colossal animals preferred eating plants to meat. 

The fossil that just sold is especially big for a stegosaurus. It measures 11 feet tall. It’s 27 feet from nose to tail. People guess that stegosauruses weighed around 3,500 pounds. It’s hard to know how long stegosauruses usually lived. But Apex lived long enough to develop creaky joints!

A fossil hunter named Jason Cooper discovered the fossil in 2022. He found it on his property near the town of Dinosaur, Colorado.  

And God said, “Let the Earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the Earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. — Genesis 1:24