SOLD! A mounted skeleton of Nanotyrannus, the dinosaur that spent decades being dismissed as a teenage T. rex, went for a colossal $47.3 million (£35.5m) at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday, the BBC reported.
The roughly 10-foot-tall skeleton, nicknamed Jodi, was expected to fetch at least $9 million. Instead six bidders slugged it out for 12 minutes. The buyer’s name hasn’t been disclosed.
That makes Jodi the second-most valuable dinosaur fossil ever sold, behind the T. rex Gus, which Sotheby’s sold for a record $50.1m in July, and ahead of the Stegosaurus Apex at $44.6m in 2024.
Sotheby’s calls it “exhibition-ready,” with about 191 fossil-bone elements and a “virtually complete skull,” and says it’s one of only three such skeletons known to science. It was found by rancher Jodi Pierson on her land in Montana’s Hell Creek Formation. Researchers only confirmed Nanotyrannus as its own genus last October.
Not everyone’s cheering. Edinburgh palaeontologist Steve Brusatte called it “harrowing” that it “could disappear into the vaults of a collector rather than displayed on a museum.” Portsmouth’s Megan Jacobs was calmer: “these things without a doubt will end up in a museum at some point.”
Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.
Sources: BBC News
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