Billionaire shatters auction records by paying $45 million for dinosaur skeleton

The name of the billionaire who bought a dinosaur skeleton for $44.6 million – making it the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction – has been revealed. Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin shattered auction records by splashing out the staggering sum to own a piece of history, CNBC reported.

The stegosaurus skeleton is believed to be 150 million years old, dating back to the late Jurassic period. At 11-foot-high, it has been aptly dubbed “Apex.”

(Also read: Stegosaurus fossil fetches nearly $45M, setting record for dinosaur auctions)

The fossil was excavated in Colorado in May 2022. “Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America!” billionaire Ken Griffin said after the sale, according to The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news that Griffin was the buyer.

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Griffin won the Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday by outbidding six other contenders. The live auction in New York lasted 15 minutes. It is worth noting that the stegosaurus skeleton was expected to fetch only around $6 million. The $44.6 million that Griffin shelled out to acquire it is being touted as a record-breaking sum, going at 11 times its low estimate.

A regular donor to the Republican party, the hedge fund chief has a net worth of approximately $37.8 billion, according to Forbes. He is now exploring the option of loaning the fossil to a US institiution.

Apex is the largest stegosaurus ever found, as per Sotheby’s. It measures 11 feet (3.3 meters) tall and 27 feet (8.2 meters) long, and is near complete, with 254 bones out of an approximate total of 319.

Apex is 30 percent larger than "Sophie", the most complete stegosaurus ever put on public display, which is housed in the Natural History Museum in London.

(With inputs from AFP)

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