The nearly complete fossilised remains of a stegosaurus have fetched a record-breaking 44.6 million dollars (£34.2 million) at auction in New York, Sotheby’s has confirmed.
The fossil was sold on Wednesday to an anonymous buyer.
The set of bones, dubbed Apex, is considered to be among the most complete ever found, according to the auction house.
The price blew past a pre-sale estimate of 4 million dollars (£3 million) to 6 million dollars (£4.6 million).
It also broke prior auction records for dinosaur fossils, with the remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Stan knocked to second place after it sold in 2020 for 31.8 million dollars (£24.4 million).
Apex “has now taken its place in history, some 150 million years since it roamed the planet”, said Cassandra Hatton, who heads Sotheby’s science-related business.
Ms Hatton added Apex is like “a colouring book dinosaur”, for its well-preserved features.
Sotheby’s said the buyer is American and intends to look into loaning Apex to an institution in the US.
The purchaser beat out six other bidders.
Measuring in at a huge 3.3 metres tall and 8.2 metres long from nose to tail, Apex was a large stegosaurus that lived long enough to show signs of arthritis, according to Sotheby’s.
Dinosaur fossil sales stir some frustration among academic palaeontologists who feel the specimens belong in museums or research centres that cannot afford huge auction prices.
A commercial palaeontology named Jason Cooper discovered the fossil in 2022 on his property near, perhaps unsurprisingly, the town of Dinosaur, Colorado.
The tiny community is near Dinosaur National Monument and the Utah border.
