Young Dino Skeleton Goes for $30.5M at Auction

A juvenile Ceratosaurus fossil stunned the auction world this week, fetching $30.5 million at Sotheby's—well beyond its initial $4 million to $6 million estimate. The six-minute bidding war drew six contenders from the floor, online, and via phone lines, with the identity of the winning buyer kept under wraps. Only three other Ceratosaurus skeletons have ever been found, and this is the first juvenile to hit the market, per the New York Times. The fossil, discovered in 1996 in Wyoming, stands just over 6 feet tall and is almost 11 feet long, featuring a remarkably complete skull, an attribute that helped drive up its price.

The 150-million-year-old fossil's journey to the auction block was a long one. Initially acquired by Utah's Museum of Ancient Life, it spent decades as an unmounted display before being sold to Brock Sisson, a former museum employee turned commercial paleontologist. Sisson's company prepared the fossil, bringing it to Sotheby's, where it drew outsize attention.

This sale—which the AP notes was part of Sotheby's "Geek Week," a larger natural-history-themed sale that included the largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth—marks the third-highest figure ever paid for a fossil at auction, following the $44.6 million sale of the "Apex" stegosaur and $31.8 million sale of "Stan" the T. rex. According to Sotheby's Cassandra Hatton, the market is drawing back collectors who'd previously left due to concerns over misrepresented specimens, per the Times. With high-profile sales like these, the fossil market is seeing renewed interest, as well as rising prices.

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Not everyone is cheering. Commercial paleontologists, for one, worry that the high values could make it harder for them to dig on private land, as landowners may charge more for access, and prevent institutions from acquiring important fossils—even encouraging museums to offload their collections for profit. "This has created a real stink in the profession," Jim Kirkland, Utah's state paleontologist, tells the Salt Lake Tribune. "If it gets buried in a private collection where no one gets to see it, that would be really, really sad." Still, Sotheby's insists the new owner's intent is to loan the fossil to a museum. "There is now perhaps the opportunity that it will be studied," Hatton tells the Times.