The skull of the stegosaurus specimen is shown at Sotheby's. Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images
NPR has a story about a Stegasaurus going up for auction at Sotheby's on Wednesday, July 17th, 2024. The animal has been named "Apex". At 11 feet tall and 27 feet long, it's considered one of the most complete specimens of Stegosaurus ever found. The specimen was discovered in Colorado and is expected to fetch between 4 and 6 million dollars.
NPR's Andrew Mambo talked with Woodruff, who is also a curator at the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami.
Cary Woodruff: The first time I saw the specimen, I was with the individual who had collected it out at the quarry where it was found in Colorado. And the rock was incredibly hard. So, it never is like Jurassic Park, but it wasn't like some beautiful laid out skeleton and oh my gosh you could see the whole thing clear as day. But at least I remember, you know, peering. There's part of a stegosaurus here. And again, even for any fossil it's really kind of magical to see this almost like an ugly duckling, too, for any fossil to see it from this preparation process to the end result. You know, it's always very special for a scientist.
Andrew Mambo: So Sotheby's is auctioning off this stegosaurus fossil on July 17. The auction house estimates it'll go for somewhere between $4 million and $6 million. How do they put a monetary value on something like a dinosaur fossil?
Woodruff: Speaking as a scientist, fossils have no monetary value. You know, these numbers are largely arbitrary. I mean, every fossil literally is unique. And I'm not just saying that, as the starry-eyed scientist. Like, there are no two of the exact same animals. I don't think fossils should be allowed to be auctioned. And these auctions really continue to deepen the divide between what we would consider academic and commercial paleontology.
