A juvenile Ceratosaurus fossil offered for $30.5 million with charges at Sotheby’s, blasting previous its excessive estimate of $6 million.
The highest lot of Sotheby’s pure historical past sale on July 16 prompted a six-minute bidding conflict between six bidders on the telephone, on-line, and within the room, ensuing within the third-highest value for a dinosaur at public sale.
The public sale outcome on July 16 follows the sale of 27-foot lengthy skeleton nicknamed ‘Apex’, which sold for $44.6 million at Sotheby’s in July 2024 to Top 200 collector Ken Griffin and is at present on mortgage to the American Museum of Pure Historical past; and a $32 million Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that offered at Christie’s in 2020.
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A Sotheby’s press launch described Lot 11 as “distinctive” and “one of many best and most full examples of its genus ever discovered,” with 139 unique fossil bone parts and “a remarkably full and totally articulated cranium.” The carnivorous dinosaur roamed the early Earth roughly 154 million–149 million years in the past.
Its fossil was unearthed on the storied Bone Cabin Quarry (West) in Wyoming in 1996, and was previously exhibited unmounted on the Museum of Historic Life, nonprofit establishment in Utah.
The New York Times reported the museum had eliminated it from its assortment and offered it to Brock Sisson, a former worker who’s now a business paleontologist, for an undisclosed quantity. Sisson’s firm mounted the fossil after which introduced it to Sotheby’s for public sale.
Sotheby’s additionally offered a Gorgosaurus skeleton in 2022 for $6.1 million and the first-ever dinosaur to be offered at public sale, a T. rex nicknamed ‘Sue’, for $8.4 million in 1997, now housed on the Discipline Museum in Chicago.
Sotheby’s press launch said that the unnamed purchaser of the Ceratosaurus intends to mortgage it to an establishment.
The pure historical past public sale at Sotheby’s additionally featured the biggest piece of Mars on earth. After quarter-hour of bidding with public sale specialists on the telephone and on-line, the Martian Meteorite – NWA 16788 offered for $5.3 million with charges, on a excessive estimate of $4 million. The outcome for the 54-pound scientific specimen immediately set a brand new world report for essentially the most helpful meteorite ever offered at public sale.
The opposite two tons that offered for seven figures and effectively above excessive estimates had been dinosaur fossils: a “just about full” Cranium of a Pachycephalosaurus (estimate of $800,00 – $1.2 million) and an Articulated Tyrannosaurus Rex Foot (estimate of $250,000 to $350,000). Each offered for $1.758 million together with charges.
Notably, all 4 of the highest tons within the pure historical past sale additionally accepted cryptocurrency funds.
