A Stegosaurus will be auctioned at Sotheby's this July as part of the auction house's "Geek Week," which will include other lots from the Natural History and Space Exploration categories.
The auction house has placed an estimate of $4 to $6 million for the historic item.
The dinosaur, named Apex, is 11 feet tall and 20 feet long and is being called "one of the most valuable dinosaurs ever offered" by the auction house.
The percentage of authentic bones is one of the largest determining factors for the value of a dinosaur, and Sotheby's says Apex includes 247 fossil bone elements and is "virtually complete." Apex is dated to the Late Jurassic period (between 161 and 146 million years ago).
“Apex marks an incredibly important milestone, as simply one of the best fossils of its kind ever unearthed," Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's global head of science and popular culture, said in a statement.
Calling the Stegosaurus "one of the most universally recognizable dinosaur species," Hatton goes on to say Apex "sets a new standard for all future discoveries of this magnitude, and further reinforces the enduring appeal of Stegosaurus and its vaunted status in popular culture.”
The sale will mark the first time an auction house has worked to bring a dinosaur specimen from discovery to market, according to Sotheby's.
Apex was discovered by a well-known paleontologist on his own land in Moffat County, Colorado, (near the town of Dinosaur) in May 2022. The find was one of many credited to the scientist, whose past discoveries have ended up in various museums and public institutions around the world.
Excavation concluded in October 2023. Apex is reportedly 30 percent larger than a comparable skeleton named Sophie, which is held in the collection of the National History Museum in London.
While better known for art and memorabilia, high-end auction houses are no strangers to the dinosaur business.
In October 2020, Christie's sold a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton named Stan for a record $31.8 million. It is planned to be displayed in the Natural History Museum of Abu Dhabi, which is slated for completion at the end of 2025.
Sotheby's ran into scandal in 2022 when it was forced to pull the auction of another Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton named Shen, which was criticized by experts for appearing to be too close in appearance to Stan, questioning how much of the specimen's bones were real. It had carried an estimate between $15 and $20 million.
The dinosaur market really took off in 1997, when Sotheby's sold another Tyrannosaurus rex named Sue for $8.36 million to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. It's believed to be the first time a dinosaur had ever been sold at auction.
This led to a "boom in the market for old bones," according to the New York Times, which described an influx of amateur dinosaur hunters exploring "fossil-rich hills" in the hopes of striking it rich, possibly selling to large institutions.
Not all the buyers are museums, however.
Nicolas Cage famously purchased a dinosaur skull in 2007 for $276,000 before finding out it had been illegally taken from Mongolia and forced to return it.
Russell Crowe's "The Art of Divorce" auction, held after his split from ex-wife Danielle Spencer, included a Mosasaur skull, which he had previously acquired from Leonardo DiCaprio in December 2008.
The trend of celebrities collecting dinosaurs has been reported widely in recent years and has been a key part of the pushback from paleontologists who fear their hard-earned research is being abused in the service of millionaire's trophy hunting.
In an apparent attempt to appease the outcry from the scientific community, Sotheby's says it will provide the buyer with scan data of the dinosaur as well as a full licende to use 3D data for any purposes, including scans and molding.
"In doing so, the sale of “Apex” will allow primary information about the dinosaur to remain with the specimen and promote collaboration in future research and education," the auction house said.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.