A dinosaur in your living room?

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Apex, the largest stegosaurus fossil ever discovered, is set to go up for auction this summer in New York. Extremely well preserved, it could become the most expensive dinosaur fossil ever sold.


Auction:

  • Venue: Sotheby’s New York
  • Date: July 17, 2024
  • Estimated price: US$4 million to US$6 million
  • Most expensive fossil ever sold: Stan, a tyrannosaurus fossil, at US$31.8 million

Apex:

  • Discovered: May 2022, Colorado, USA
  • Period: Upper Jurassic
  • Age: 146 to 161 million years old
  • Size: 3.4 meters high and 8.2 meters long
  • Number of bone pieces: 248

Source: Sotheby’s auction house

The Stegosaurus:

  • Etymology: “roof lizard” – from Greek stegos“roof”, and sauros” lizard “
  • Diet: herbivore
  • Features :
    – Very small head compared to the rest of the body, brain the size of a walnut
    – Bony plates of different sizes arranged in two alternating rows on the back
    – Massive tail for defense against predators
    – Forelimbs twice as short as the hind limbs, but exclusively quadrupedal

Source : Ecology and Behaviour of Mesozoic Reptiles – Herbivorous Dinosaurs2005


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