NY – The most complete and best preserved skeleton of a dinosaur 'Stegosaurus', which lived 150 million years ago, will be auctioned at Sotheby's in NY on July 17 with a starting price between $4 and $6 million.
According to Sotheby's today, it is the “best specimen” of this recognizable dinosaur that is up for auction and the institution has also collaborated with the owner since its discovery two years ago in Colorado (United States), the first association of its kind.
The 'stegosaurus' is a herbivorous dinosaur from the late Jurassic period with an arched back and spine crowned by spines that run from the head to the tail.
The specimen up for auction, nicknamed 'Apex', measures about 3 meters high and 6 meters long, and has no signs of combat or damage caused by predators but rather evidence of arthritis, which indicates that it reached an advanced age, a statement indicates. .
Sotheby's has a long history of selling dinosaur fossils since in 1997 it was the first house to offer a complete skeleton, the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex “Sue”, which sold for $8.36 million and can be seen at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Recently, this institution sold the complete skeleton of a Gorgosaurus, a relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, for more than $6 million, and also for a similar price it sold a skull of the king predator, while Christie's, a rival house, has achieved higher collections.
At Christie's, a 'Deinonychus' dinosaur skeleton sold this year for $12.4 million, although below the record for a fossil, which it has held since 2020, when it sold a complete T-Rex, nicknamed 'Stan', for $31.8 million.
In recent decades, the fossils of dinosaurs have been appearing at auctions with increasingly higher prices to the concern of paleontologists, who claim that their place is in research centers and not in private collections.