New York – It is sold: a 54 pound rock. Estimated auction price: two to four million dollars. Why so expensive? It is the greatest fragment of Mars ever found on Earth.
The Sotheby’s house in New York will auction on Wednesday what is known as NWA 16788 within a sale with natural history theme that also includes the skeleton of a young Ceratous dinosaur, which measures more than 6 feet high and almost 11 feet long.
According to the auction house, it is believed that the meteorite was fired from the surface of Mars due to the impact of a huge mass asteroid before traveling 140 million miles to the earth, where he crashed in the Sahara. A meteorit hunter found him in Niger in November 2023, says Sotheby’s.
The red, brown and gray piece is approximately 70% larger than the next largest fragment of Mars found on Earth and represents almost 7% of all the marked material currently on this planet, says Sotheby’s. It measures almost 15 inches 11 inches for six inches.
“This Martian meteorite is, by far, the greatest fragment of Mars we have found,” Cassandra Hatton, vice president of science and natural history in Sotheby’s, said in an interview. “It is more than double the size of what we thought was the greatest fragment of Mars.”
It is also a weird finding. There are only 400 Martian meteors of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, says Sotheby’s.
Hatton commented that a small fragment of the remnant of the red planet was extracted and sent to a specialized laboratory that confirmed that it is from Mars. It was compared to the distinctive chemical composition of the Martian meteorites discovered by the viking space probe that landed on Mars in 1976, he said.
The exam determined that it is “Shergottita Olivino-Microgabróica”, a type of Martian rock formed by the slow cooling of the Martian magma. It has a thick grain texture and contains the pyroxen and olivine minerals, according to Sotheby’s.
It also has a glassy surface, probably due to the strong heat that it supports when crossing the Earth’s atmosphere, Hatton said. “So that was his first clue that this was not just a great rock on the ground,” he said.
The meteorite was exposed before at the Italian space agency in Rome. Sotheby’s did not reveal the owner.
It is not clear exactly the meteorite fell on Earth, but the tests show that it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby’s said.
For its part, the skeleton of Ceratourus nasicornis was found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, in Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaur bones. The specialists assembled almost 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it to be ready to exhibit, says Sotheby’s.
It is believed that the skeleton is from the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, says Sotheby’s. Its auction estimate is four to six million dollars.
Ceratourus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that seem similar to Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller. Ceratourus dinosaurs could grow up to 25 feet long, while Tyrannosaurus Rex could reach 40 feet long.
The skeleton was acquired last year by Fossilogic, a fossil preparation and assembly company based in Utah.
Wednesday’s auction is part of the Geek Week 2025 of Sotheby’s and presents 122 articles, including other meteorites, fossils and gema quality minerals.