A source who knows this revealed Ken Griffin, the CEO of Citadel hedge fund to have spent a whopping $44.6 million on a stegosaurus fossil at an auction that recently took place. The auction house said the skeleton was called Apex, and that it is approximately 150 million years old, which makes it the largest stegosaurus ever unearthed.
Ken Griffin won after a fifteen minute bidding war against six other bidders during which he bid over the phone while a live audience cheered as the price climbed up. The Wall Street Journal quoted him saying that “Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America” when they first surfaced as Griffin’s buyer.
Forbes estimates that according to Forbes magazine this Republican Party donor has an estimated net worth of $37.8 billion. Speaking to AFP, a source said he might consider lending it out to an American institution.
Ken Griffin has worked with museums before. Two years ago, for instance, he bought one from 1787 Constitution for $43.2 million and loaned it out at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas. Then again, in 2018 he gave Chicago’s Field Museum $16.5 million so they could build a dinosaur exhibit with these funds.
This newly acquired skeleton measures about 11 feet tall (3.3 meters) and 27 feet long (8.2 meters), almost complete with 254 bones of what is thought to be around 319.
Recently paleontologists have been concerned because private collectors are outbidding museums for dinosaur remains.
The previous record for sale of a dinosaur skeleton was set by Stan-a Tyrannosaurus Rex-which was sold for $31.8 million during another auction in 2020.
Apex dwarfs any previously publicly exhibited stegosaurus skeleton by size alone. The world’s most complete stegosaurus specimen on display today is Sophie at London’s Natural History Museum. In fact, Apex is 30% bigger than Sophie.
