Billionaire hedge fund owner Ken Griffin purchased a stegosaurus fossil for $44.6 million at Sotheby’s Wednesday, making it the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction.
The 161-million-year-old stegosaurus, named “Apex,” was only expected to sell for around $6 million.
Griffin, founder and CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, beat out six other bidders for Apex and plans to look into loaning the fossil to a U.S. institution, NBC News reported.
“Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America!” Griffin said after the sale, according to a press release.
Apex is approximately 11 feet tall and nearly 27 feet long from nose to tail, with no signs of combat-related injuries or postmortem scavenging, according to Sotheby’s. The fossil was excavated on private land in Moffat County, Colorado, in 2022 and 2023.
Its size and degree of bone development suggest the dinosaur was “a large, robust adult individual,” Sotheby’s said. The skeleton showed signs of arthritis, indicating the stegosaurus may have lived to an advanced age.
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Sotheby’s called Apex “the finest stegosaurus specimen to come to market, distinguished by its incredible size, virtual completeness, and exceptional level of preservation.”
Griffin previously gave $16.5 million to Chicago’s Field Museum in 2018 to fund the display of a cast of the biggest dinosaur ever discovered and paid $43.2 million in 2021 for a copy of the U.S. Constitution, which he loaned to a museum in Arkansas, the Financial Times reported.
