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Arts|World’s Priciest Dinosaur Fossil Comes to Museum of Natural History
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/arts/most-expensive-stegosaurus-american-museum-of-natural-history.html
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The billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin, who bought the stegosaurus fossil for $44.6 million, is loaning it to the American Museum of Natural History in New York for four years.
Dec. 5, 2024, 10:10 a.m. ET
The most expensive dinosaur fossil ever sold at auction, a stegosaurus that the billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin bought over the summer for $44.6 million, has a new home: the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
The museum announced on Thursday that it would be the first institution to exhibit the sought-after stegosaurus, as part of a four-year loan from Griffin.
“It’s one of the dinosaurs that every kid knows how to draw,” Sean M. Decatur, the museum’s president, said in an interview this week before the dinosaur was revealed. “This is a unique opportunity to have something that simultaneously, I think, really resonates in the public imagination about dinosaurs, but also from a research standpoint, is really a pretty special specimen to understand.”
The mounted stegosaurus was revealed from behind a billowing beige curtain on Thursday morning to reporters, photographers, museum employees and a group of elementary school children. It is scheduled to go on view to the public on Sunday after it is fully prepared for exhibition.
The Sotheby’s sale of the unusually complete specimen — which is nicknamed Apex — shattered records in the booming fossil market. And it established a new king of the dinosaur world, at least in the eyes of the auction market: The stegosaurus dethroned the Tyrannosaurus rex, the previous record-holder.
But the auction also stoked fears among academic paleontologists that museums and universities were being priced out of their research field by well-heeled private collectors. After purchasing the stegosaurus, Griffin, the founder and chief executive of the hedge fund Citadel, said he intended to lend the specimen to an American institution so it would be available to scientists and the public.
