Billionaire Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, purchased a late-Jurassic stegosaurus skeleton named “Apex” for $44.6 million at Sotheby’s, making it the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction. The nearly complete skeleton measures 11 feet tall and almost 27 feet long with 254 fossil bone elements. Despite being expected to sell for $6 million, Griffin won the live auction in New York after a 15-minute bidding war with six other participants. He plans to loan the specimen to a U.S. institution.
Apex, excavated in Colorado, shows no signs of combat-related injuries or scavenging post-mortem. Griffin previously donated $16.5 million to Chicago’s Field Museum for a dinosaur display. In 2021, he outbid cryptocurrency investors to acquire a first-edition copy of the U.S. Constitution for $43.2 million, loaning it to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Griffin expressed his intention to keep Apex in America, echoing his patriotic sentiments.
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