Sotheby’s New York Auction House has announced a hotly discussed item to be featured
next month in their Geek Week auction event and the whole world is talking about it.
This item also happens to originate from the Morrison Formation in Moffat County,
Colorado. It’s estimated that Apex, the mounted stegosaurus skeleton, will bring in
between $4 million and $6 million dollars when it comes to auction in July. According to
Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s senior vice president, this is the first time a specimen of this
kind has been offered by a major international auction house. “This is an incredibly
important discovery and I don’t know of another stegosaurus that matches the size and
quality of this one,” shares Hatton. Sotheby’s shares that Apex is approximately 11.5 feet
tall, 27 feet long and 6 feet wide which is almost twice the size of Sophie, the stegosaurus
in London’s Natural History Museum. “The quality of the fossil is excellent,” Hatton
adds. “Even impressions of the skin have been preserved.” While there are plenty excited
for the auction scheduled for July 17th, there has also been plenty of criticism, especially
from paleontologists that disagree with auction sales like this that ultimately denies
scientists and the public access to incredible fossils.
